Confluent vs StreamSets comparison

The compared Confluent and IBM solutions aren't in the same category. Confluent is ranked #5 in SA , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 6.5% mindshare in the category. IBM is ranked #24 in DI , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Confluent users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Confluent

Read 25 Confluent reviews

4,827 Views
2,607 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 21 StreamSets reviews

3,183 Views
2,355 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Confluent

StreamSets

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Confluent and StreamSets based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Streaming Analytics solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Confluent vs. StreamSets Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Confluent vs. StreamSets

April 2026

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Helped 886,932 peers since 2012

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

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (5th)

StreamSets

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (24th)

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and StreamSets aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, down 8.6% compared to last year.
StreamSets, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 1.1% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.

Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Confluent	6.5%
Apache Flink	9.8%
Databricks	8.2%
Other	75.5%

Streaming Analytics

Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
StreamSets	1.1%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)	3.5%
SSIS	3.5%
Other	91.9%

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

PavanManepalli

AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo

Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing

I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Read full review

SrinivasanSankar

Enterprise Solutions Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enables effective batch loading with visual interface and enterprise support

One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infrastructure. I had to switch to a new EC2 box, even though the processor was not fully utilized. It would be beneficial if StreamSets addressed any potential memory leak issues to prevent unnecessary upgrades. Additionally, it would be a great enhancement if StreamSets could produce a lineage graph to visualize how the data has passed through the system.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."

"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."

"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."

"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."

"We ensure seamless management of Kafka through Confluent, allowing all of our Kafka activities to be handled by a third party."

"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."

"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."

"It is also good for knowledge base management."

More Confluent pros

"The scheduling within the data engineering pipeline is very much appreciated, and it has a wide range of connectors for connecting to any data sources like SQL Server, AWS, Azure, etc. We have used it with Kafka, Hadoop, and Azure Data Factory Datasets. Connecting to these systems with StreamSets is very easy."

"The most valuable features are the option of integration with a variety of protocols, languages, and origins."

"It has helped us in moving into the data analytics world at a faster pace than any other tool would have done."

"StreamSets’ data drift resilience has reduced the time it takes us to fix data drift breakages, completing processes that previously took approximately an hour to an hour and a half with Hadoop in just 15 minutes and saving us around 45 minutes per data pipeline or table that we migrate."

"StreamSets is the leader in the market."

"StreamSets data drift feature gives us an alert upfront so we know that the data can be ingested. Whatever the schema or data type changes, it lands automatically into the data lake without any intervention from us, but then that information is crucial to fix for downstream pipelines, which process the data into models, like Tableau and Power BI models. This is actually very useful for us. We are already seeing benefits. Our pipelines used to break when there were data drift changes, then we needed to spend about a week fixing it. Right now, we are saving one to two weeks. Though, it depends on the complexity of the pipeline, we are definitely seeing a lot of time being saved."

"In StreamSets, everything is in one place."

"The Ease of configuration for pipes is amazing. It has a lot of connectors. Mainly, we can do everything with the data in the pipe. I really like the graphical interface too"

More StreamSets pros

Cons

"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box."

"The beginner who doesn't know how to work on HTML will struggle as when you create spaces in the Confluent, if you want to have some meeting notes or anything else, you need to know HTML and which HTML tags to include."

"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."

"It could be improved by including a feature that automatically creates a new topic and puts failed messages."

"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."

"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."

"It could be improved by including a feature that automatically creates a new topic and puts failed messages."

"The pricing model should include the ability to pick features and be charged for them only."

More Confluent cons

"One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infrastructure."

"Sometimes, it is not clear at first how to set up nodes. A site with an explanation of how each node works would be very helpful."

"We create pipelines or jobs in StreamSets Control Hub. It is a great feature, but if there is a way to have a folder structure or organize the pipelines and jobs in Control Hub, it would be great. I submitted a ticket for this some time back."

"We've seen a couple of cases where it appears to have a memory leak or a similar problem."

"There are a few things that can be better."

"There aren't enough hands-on labs, and debugging is also an issue because it takes a lot of time. Logs are not that clear when you are debugging, and you can only select a single source for a pipeline."

"If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data."

"One area for improvement could be the cloud storage server speed, as we have faced some latency issues here and there."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."

"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 an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."

"The solution is cheaper than other products."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."

"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."

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."

"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."

More Confluent pricing and cost advice

"There are different versions of the product. One is the corporate license version, and the other one is the open-source or free version. I have been using the corporate license version, but they have recently launched a new open-source version so that anybody can create an account and use it. The licensing cost varies from customer to customer. I don't have a lot of input on that. It is taken care of by PMO, and they seem fine with its pricing model. It is being used enterprise-wide. They seem to have got a good deal for StreamSets."

"We use the free version. It's great for a public, free release. Our stance is that the paid support model is too expensive to get into. They should honestly reevaluate that."

"It's not so favorable for small companies."

"StreamSets Data Collector is open source. One can utilize the StreamSets Data Collector, but the Control Hub is the main repository where all the jobs are present. Everything happens in Control Hub."

"The overall cost is very flexible so it is not a burden for our organization... However, the cost should be improved. For small and mid-size organizations it might be a challenge."

"I believe the pricing is not equitable."

"StreamSets is an expensive solution."

"We are running the community version right now, which can be used free of charge."

More StreamSets pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Retailer

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?

They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Confluent?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Confluent?

The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...

See all answers

What do you like most about StreamSets?

The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StreamSets?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StreamSets?

We are using StreamSets for batch loading.

See all answers

Comparisons

Palantir Foundry vs Confluent

Compared 13% of the time

Apache Flink vs Confluent

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Confluent

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Confluent

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Confluent

Compared 3% of the time

More Confluent Competitors

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs StreamSets

Compared 7% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

SSIS vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

Matillion Data Productivity Cloud vs StreamSets

Compared 4% of the time

Oracle GoldenGate vs StreamSets

Compared 4% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Confluent

April 2026

Download Confluent product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

March 2026

Download StreamSets product report

Overview

Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka.

Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks:

Speed up application development and connectivity
Enable transformations through stream processing
Streamline business operations at scale
Adhere to strict architectural standards

Confluent is a more complete distribution of Kafka in that it enhances the integration possibilities of Kafka by introducing tools for managing and optimizing Kafka clusters while providing methods for making sure the streams are secure. Confluent supports publish-and-subscribe as well as the storing and processing of data within the streams. Kafka is easier to operate and build thanks to Confluent.

Confluent's software is available in three different varieties:

A free, open-source streaming platform that makes it simple to start using real-time data streams
An enterprise-grade version of the product with more administrative, ops, and monitoring tools
A premium cloud-based version.

Confluent Advantage Features

Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Multi-language
- Clients: C++, Python, Go, and .NET
- REST proxy: Can connect to Kafka from any connected network device
- Admin REST APIs: RESTful interface for performing administrator operations

Pre-built ecosystem
- Connectors: More than 100 supported connectors, including S3, Elastic, HDFS, JDBC
- MQTT proxy: Gain access to Kafka from MQTT gateways and devices
- Schema registry: Centralized database to guarantee data compatibility

Streaming database
- ksqlDB: Materialized views and real-time stream processing

GUI management
- Control panel: GUI for scalable Kafka management and monitoring
- Health+: Smart alerts and cloud-based control centers

DevOps automation that is flexible
- Confluent for Kubernetes: Complete API to deploy on Kubernetes
- Automated Ansible deployment on non-containerized environments

Dynamic performance
- Self-balancing clusters: Automated partition re-balancing across brokers in the cluster
- Tiered storage: Older Kafka data offloading to object storage with transparent access

Security that is enterprise-grade
- Role-based access control: Granular user/group access authorization
- Audit logs that are structured: Logs of user actions kept in dedicated Kafka topics
- Secret protection: Sensitive information is encrypted

Global resilience
- Linking clusters: A real-time, highly reliable, and consistent bridge across on-premises and cloud environments
- Multiple-region clusters: Single Kafka cluster with automated client failover distributed across multiple data centers
- Replicator: Asynchronous replication that is based on the Kafka Connect framework

Support
- Round the clock enterprise support from Kafka experts

Reviews from Real Users

Confluent stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust enterprise support and its open source option. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Ravi B., a solutions architect at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “KSQL is a valuable feature, as is the Kafka Connect framework for connecting to the various source systems where you need not write the code. We get great support from Confluent because we're using the enterprise version and whenever there's a problem, they support us with fine-tuning and finding the root cause.”

Amit S., an IT consultant, notes, “The biggest benefit is that it is open source. You have the flexibility of opting or not opting for enterprise support, even though the tool itself is open source.” He adds, “The second benefit is it's very modern and built on Java and Scala. You can extend the features very well, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do so.”

Confluent

StreamSets is a data integration platform that enables organizations to efficiently move and process data across various systems. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing, deploying, and managing data pipelines, allowing users to easily connect to various data sources and destinations. StreamSets also provides real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, ensuring that data is flowing smoothly and any issues are quickly addressed.

IBM

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost

Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge

Buyer's Guide

Confluent vs. StreamSets

April 2026

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