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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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 feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided; they're leading the market in this category."

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

"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."

"Some of the best features are that it's very quick to set up, very easy to have a centralized area that gives us a history of changes, and the ability to give feedback on any information placed onto the pages."

"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."

"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."

"It is also good for knowledge base management."

"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."

More Confluent pros

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

"StreamSets is the leader in the market."

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

"For me, the most valuable features in StreamSets have to be the Data Collector and Control Hub, but especially the Data Collector. That feature is very elegant and seamlessly works with numerous source systems."

"One of the things I like is the data pipelines. They have a very good design. Implementing pipelines is very straightforward. It doesn't require any technical skill."

"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."

"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."

"StreamSets Transformer is a good feature because it helps you when you are developing applications and when you don't want to write a lot of code. That is the best feature overall."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."

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

"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."

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

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

"From the control center perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement in the visualization."

"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."

"We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."

More Confluent cons

"The documentation is inadequate and has room for improvement because the technical support does not regularly update their documentation or the knowledge base."

"The monitoring visualization is not that user-friendly. It should include other features to visualize things, like how many records were streamed from a source to a destination on a particular date."

"If the data processing in StreamSets takes a long time as compared to the previous solution, then we will reconsider why we use StreamSets."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see it integrate with other kinds of platforms, other than Java. We're going to have a lot of applications using .NET and other languages or frameworks. StreamSets is very helpful for the old Java platform but it's hard to integrate with the other platforms and frameworks."

"One thing that I would like to add is the ability to manually enter data. The way the solution currently works is we don't have the option to manually change the data at any point in time. Being able to do that will allow us to do everything that we want to do with our data. Sometimes, we need to manually manipulate the data to make it more accurate in case our prior bifurcation filters are not good. If we have the option to manually enter the data or make the exact iterations on the data set, that would be a good thing."

"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."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is highly priced."

"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."

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

"Confluent is an expensive solution."

"It comes with a high cost."

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

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

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."

"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."

"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."

"StreamSets is an expensive solution."

"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."

"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 pricing is affordable for any business."

"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 12% of the time

Apache Flink vs Confluent

Compared 7% 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 6% of the time

SSIS vs StreamSets

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) vs StreamSets

Compared 4% of the time

Matillion Data Productivity Cloud 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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