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Redpanda vs Starburst Galaxy 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

Redpanda
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
18th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
13th
Average Rating
9.8
Reviews Sentiment
1.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Redpanda is 1.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Starburst Galaxy1.5%
Redpanda1.6%
Other96.9%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

ArpitShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Analyst at CLSA
Affordable, easy to deploy, and it is easy to find things on the user interface
We use the libraries in the different programming languages. We use the message format in Avro, convert the data in the format, and pass it on. We have contacted the sales team about the solution. So far, the product fulfills our requirements. We get lots of data. The data flows through Kafka to Redpanda. Then it goes to a database. If our infrastructure goes down for a week, we will not lose data. It is an advantage of Redpanda. I recommend the product to others. We might choose a different solution if we find something cheaper. We used Redpanda because we did not want to self-host our software. Redpanda is a piece of infrastructure. There is not much of a learning curve. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
reviewer2750097 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Business Intelligence at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Unified data access improves analytics and simplifies complex processes
I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs. I also want support for more connectors such as Kinesis and Firehose, support for more file types such as Avro and JSON, and object storage message queue integration for object storage integrations. A single view of query execution and optimization details, rather than needing to toggle between the Galaxy and Trino UI, would be helpful. Additionally, enhanced control over account and environment variables that would be available in the Enterprise edition would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The cost savings have been significant."
"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"The UI is modern."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
 

Cons

"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."
"The version control mechanism must be improved."
"Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."
"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?
Redpanda is actually a commercial platform, but they do provide free versions as well. I've been working only with the free versions.
What needs improvement with Redpanda?
Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good. Maybe ...
What is your primary use case for Redpanda?
I have worked with Redpanda for the past two to three months. Mainly in the tech industry or software industry, there's a huge rise of streaming data. Redpanda serves as a very reliable and fast me...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace. On the AWS side this ...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
I use the solution for processing large simulation datasets into aggregated datasets that can either be used for real-time data analysis or stored for later analysis.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Redpanda vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.