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Confluent vs IBM InfoSphere DataStage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
IBM InfoSphere DataStage
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and IBM InfoSphere DataStage aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 8.4%, down 9.8% compared to last year.
IBM InfoSphere DataStage, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 3.7% mindshare, down 5.7% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Confluent8.4%
Apache Flink14.6%
Databricks13.1%
Other63.9%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM InfoSphere DataStage3.7%
Informatica PowerCenter6.3%
SSIS5.9%
Other84.1%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
Swetha S - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution streamlines design, development, and deployment with effective ETL features
The support has been really good. Typically, if we have any issues, we raise a ticket with IBM, and they help us resolve the issues if required. We also have the flexibility to submit a feature request to be included as part of the wishlist, potentially becoming a product feature in subsequent releases.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and tools."
"The most valuable feature that we are using is the data replication between the data centers allowing us to configure a disaster recovery or software. However, is it's not mandatory to use and because most of the features that we use are from Apache Kafka, such as end-to-end encryption. Internally, we can develop our own kind of product or service from Apache Kafka."
"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."
"IBM is stable and accurate to monitor. It's easy to understand to monitor the data lineage from source to target."
"In IBM DataStage, the Transformer is the most valuable feature for me. It enables me to apply complex transformations, generate the gateway key, and map source tables into the session table."
"I am impressed with the tool's ETL tracing."
"IBM InfoSphere DataStage is a stable tool with active support from IBM."
"The solution has improved the time it takes to perform tasks related to batch applications."
"It is straightforward from a design and development perspective, and also for deployment."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to transfer information via notes."
"DataStage works better with Linux operating systems when the application services are hosted on Linux system equipment, but it's powerful on Windows too."
 

Cons

"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"Confluent's price needs improvement."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"The solution needs improvement in connectivity with big data technologies such as Spark."
"Its documentation is not up to the mark. While building APIs, we had a lot of problems trying to get around it because it is not very user-friendly. We tried to get hold of API documentation, but the documentation is not very well thought out. It should be more structured and elaborate. In terms of additional features, I would like to see good reporting on performance and performance-tuning recommendations that can be based on AI. I would also like to see better data profiling information being reported on InfoSphere."
"The solution can be a bit more user-friendly, similar to Informatica."
"I'd like to be able to do more with the data and metadata, including copy and pasting, et cetera."
"In terms of intermediate storage, we have some challenges, especially with customers who store data in intermediate locations."
"The pricing should be lower."
"It would be useful to provide support for Python, AR, and Java."
"I really like this tool, but the administration should be on the same client application because a lot of administration features are not on the client-side, and they usually need to have administrative access. It's quite complicated to force IT teams to have separate administrative access from the developers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"The solution is cheap."
"It's very expensive."
"The pricing depends on the setup. However, we paid $100,000 as a one-time cost for an on-premises setup."
"The product is expensive."
"The cost is too high."
"The pricing is competitive but on the higher side of the pricing scale."
"Our internal team takes care of group licensing and cost. We don't have individual licenses. We have group licensing at the company level. Usually, IBM doesn't charge anything separately on the licensing side. For storage and everything else, we are paying around $6,000 per month, which is not very high. It includes Linux data storage, execution, and licensing. They're charging $40 for one-hour execution. Based on that, we are spending around $2,000 on the production environment and $1,000 on the lower environment for testing and development-side executions. For the mainframe, we are using the Db2 mainframe database, and we are spending around $1,000 on the Db2 mainframe database as well. All this comes out to be around $6,000. We, however, would like to have some cost reduction."
"I have no information on the exact pricing for IBM InfoSphere DataStage because the solution is usually procured by the clients my company works with, though the pricing is higher compared to other solutions, so many clients choose to go with a different solution rather than IBM InfoSphere DataStage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
Would you upgrade to more premium versions of IBM InfoSphere DataStage?
My company currently uses the free version of the product, and we are definitely switching to a paid one. We needed a tool that can help us not only integrate our data but use it effectively. For ...
Is IBM InfoSphere DataStage more difficult to use compared to other tools in the field?
I think the tool may cause some difficulties if you have not used other data integration solutions before. I have worked at companies that used different tools for data integration, and they work ...
Do you rely on IBM Cloud Paks for your data? Have you utilized this product, or do you use IBM InfoSphere DataStage without it?
IBM Cloud Paks makes a big difference in your data integration. My company has been using it alongside IBM InfoSphere DataStage and while the main product is good on its own, this one truly expands...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Dubai Statistics Center, Etisalat Egypt
Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. IBM InfoSphere DataStage and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.