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Confluent vs Upsolver comparison

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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
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Upsolver
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (39th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Confluent is 6.2%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Upsolver is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.2%
Upsolver1.3%
Other92.5%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2784462 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streaming pipelines have become simpler and onboarding new data sources is now much faster
One of the best features Upsolver offers is the automatic schema evolution. Another good feature is SQL-based streaming transformations. Complex streaming transformations such as cleansing, deduplication, and enrichment were implemented using SQL and drastically reduced the need for custom Spark code. My experience with the SQL-based streaming transformations in Upsolver is that it had a significant positive impact on the overall data engineering workflow. By replacing custom Spark streaming jobs with declarative SQL logic, I simplified development, review, and deployment processes. Data transformations such as parsing, filtering, enrichment, and deduplication could be implemented and modified quickly without rebuilding or redeploying complex code-based pipelines. Upsolver has impacted my organization positively because it brings many benefits. The first one is faster onboarding of new data sources. Another one is more reliable streaming pipelines. Another one is near-real-time data availability, which is very important for us. It also reduced operational effort for data engineering teams. A specific outcome that highlights these benefits is that the time to onboard new sources is reduced from weeks to days. Custom Spark code reduction reached 50 to 40 percent. Pipeline failures are reduced by 70 to 80 percent. Data latency is improved from hours to minutes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent, and the other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"We primarily use Confluent for service desk and task management, and it is also good for knowledge base management."
"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."
"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."
"I have saved 50 to 60% on maintaining pipelines since using Upsolver."
"The most prominent feature of Upsolver is its function as an ETL tool, allowing data to be moved across platforms and different data technologies."
"A specific outcome that highlights these benefits is that the time to onboard new sources is reduced from weeks to days, custom Spark code reduction reached 50 to 40 percent, pipeline failures are reduced by 70 to 80 percent, and data latency is improved from hours to minutes."
"Customer service is excellent, and I would rate it between eight point five to nine out of ten."
"It was easy to use and set up, with a nearly no-code interface that relied mostly on drag-and-drop functionality."
 

Cons

"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"It could have more themes. The themes in the version I'm using are very limited; they offer two to three themes."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"It could have more integration with different platforms."
"The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"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."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"I would say Upsolver's scalability is eight out of 10 because of pricing."
"I think that Upsolver can be improved in orchestration because it is not a full orchestration tool."
"There is room for improvement in query tuning."
"Upsolver excels in ETL and data aggregation, while ThoughtSpot is strong in natural language processing for querying datasets. Combining these tools can be very effective: Upsolver handles aggregation and ETL, and ThoughtSpot allows for natural language queries. There’s potential for highlighting these integrations in the future."
"On the stability side, I would rate it seven out of ten. Using multiple cloud providers and data engineering technologies creates complexity, and managing different plugins is not always easy, but they are working on it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"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."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"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 has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Upsolver is affordable at approximately $225 per terabyte per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Retailer
13%
Construction Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 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 ...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Upsolver?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing is nine out of 10.
What needs improvement with Upsolver?
I think Upsolver can be improved with deeper integration with external orchestration out of the box. I would appreciate more clear dashboards with billing in real time as a needed improvement.
What is your primary use case for Upsolver?
My main use case for Upsolver is to operate with changes in the structure of new data without a pipeline disrupting. I write SQL queries in Upsolver, and the platform takes care of the data itself,...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. Upsolver and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.