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 6.8% mindshare in the category. IBM is ranked #21 in DI , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.2% 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

4,606 Views
2,395 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 21 StreamSets reviews

2,863 Views
2,090 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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Confluent vs. StreamSets

February 2026

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Helped 882,160 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 (21st)

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 6.8%, down 8.5% compared to last year.
StreamSets, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 1.2% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Confluent	6.8%
Apache Flink	11.3%
Databricks	9.5%
Other	72.4%

Streaming Analytics

Data Integration Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StreamSets	1.2%
SSIS	3.7%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)	3.5%
Other	91.6%

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.

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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

"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."

"It is also good for knowledge base management."

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

"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."

"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."

"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."

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

"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."

More Confluent pros

"The most valuable feature is the pipelines because they enable us to pull in and push out data from different sources and to manipulate and clean things up within them."

"The ability to have a good bifurcation rate and fewer mistakes is valuable."

"The ETL capabilities are very useful for us. We extract and transform data from multiple data sources, into a single, consistent data store, and then we put it in our systems. We typically use it to connect our Apache Kafka with data lakes. That process is smooth and saves us a lot of time in our production systems."

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

"The best feature that I really like is the integration."

"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 customize it to do what you need. Many other tools have started to use features similar to those introduced by StreamSets, like automated workflows that are easy to set up."

"What I love the most is that StreamSets is very light. It's a containerized application. It's easy to use with Docker. If you are a large organization, it's very easy to use Kubernetes."

"The entire user interface is very simple and the simplicity of creating pipelines is something that I like very much about it. The design experience is very smooth."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

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

"The Schema Registry service could be improved. I would like a bigger knowledge base of other use cases and more technical forums. It would be good to have more flexible monitoring features added to the next release as well."

"Confluent has fallen behind in being the tool of the industry. It's taking second place to things such as Word and SharePoint and other office tools that are more dynamic and flexible than Confluent."

"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."

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

"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."

"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."

"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. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."

More Confluent cons

"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."

"They need to improve their customer care services. Sometimes it has taken more than 48 hours to resolve an issue. That should be reduced. They are aware of small or generic issues, but not the more technical or deep issues. For those, they require some time, generally 48 to 72 hours to respond. That should be improved."

"We often faced problems, especially with SAP ERP. We struggled because many columns weren't integers or primary keys, which StreamSets couldn't handle. We had to restructure our data tables, which was painful. Also, pipeline failures were common, and data drifting wasn't addressed, which made things worse. Licensing was another issue we encountered."

"The software is very good overall. Areas for improvement are the error logging and the version history. I would like to see better, more detailed error logging information."

"StreamSets should provide a mechanism to be able to perform data quality assessment when the data is being moved from one source to the target."

"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."

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

"Visualization and monitoring need to be improved and refined."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It comes with a high cost."

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

"You have to pay additional for one or two features."

"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 highly priced."

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

"The solution is cheaper than other products."

"Confluent is an expensive solution."

More Confluent pricing and cost advice

"It has a CPU core-based licensing, which works for us and is quite good."

"The pricing is affordable for any business."

"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."

"Its pricing is pretty much up to the mark. For smaller enterprises, it could be a big price to pay at the initial stage of operations, but the moment you have the Seed B or Seed C funding and you want to scale up your operations and aren't much worried about the funds, at that point in time, you would need a solution that could be scaled."

"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."

"There are two editions, Professional and Enterprise, and there is a free trial. We're using the Professional edition and it is competitively priced."

"The pricing is too fixed. It should be based on how much data you need to process. Some businesses are not so big that they process a lot of data."

"The licensing is expensive, and there are other costs involved too. I know from using the software that you have to buy new features whenever there are new updates, which I don't really like. But initially, it was very good."

More StreamSets pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

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 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...

See all answers

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 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 14% of the time

Apache Flink vs Confluent

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Confluent

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Confluent

Compared 6% of the time

Aiven Platform vs Confluent

Compared 3% of the time

More Confluent Competitors

webMethods.io vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

Matillion Data Productivity Cloud vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle GoldenGate vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

IBM InfoSphere Information Server vs StreamSets

Compared 4% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Confluent

February 2026

Download Confluent product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

January 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

February 2026

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