What users are saying about
97 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.1 out of 100
Based on 97 reviews and ratings
40 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.1 out of 100
Based on 40 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
API Management

Apache Kafka
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
9.4
Apigee Edge
94%
Apigee Edge ranks higher in 7/7 features
Apigee Edge ranks higher in 7/7 features
API access control
N/A
0 Ratings
9.0
90%
7 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies
N/A
0 Ratings
9.0
90%
7 Ratings
API usage data
N/A
0 Ratings
9.0
90%
7 Ratings
API user onboarding
N/A
0 Ratings
9.9
99%
7 Ratings
API versioning
N/A
0 Ratings
9.9
99%
7 Ratings
Usage billing and payments
N/A
0 Ratings
9.0
90%
6 Ratings
API monitoring and logging
N/A
0 Ratings
10.0
100%
7 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Apache Kafka is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Usability, Support Rating
- Apache Kafka and Apigee Edge are tied in 1 area: Likelihood to Renew
Likelihood to Recommend

9.3
Apache Kafka
93%
13 Ratings
9.0
Apigee Edge
90%
7 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

9.0
Apache Kafka
90%
1 Rating
9.0
Apigee Edge
90%
1 Rating
Usability

10.0
Apache Kafka
100%
1 Rating
9.0
Apigee Edge
90%
1 Rating
Support Rating

8.6
Apache Kafka
86%
7 Ratings
6.0
Apigee Edge
60%
2 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache Kafka
Despite the disadvantages I list, I really believe that Kafka is the right choice whenever you need a queueing or message broker system. Kafka is way too battle-tested and scales too well to ever not consider it. The only exception is if your use case requires many, many small topics. Also, Kafka doesn't support delay queues out of the box and so you will need to "hack" it through special code on the consumer side.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Internet Company, 201-500 employeesApigee Edge
Few scenarios 1. For viewing API analytics, I think it is best in the market 2. For earning money via API monetization 3. Securing API 4. Onboarding legacy APIs to provide modern REST endpoints
Associate Director
UBSInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees
Pros
Apache Kafka
- Apache Kafka is able to handle a large number of I/Os (writes) using 3-4 cheap servers.
- It scales very well over large workloads and can handle extreme-scale deployments (eg. Linkedin with 300 billion user events each day).
- The same Kafka setup can be used as a messaging bus, storage system or a log aggregator making it easy to maintain as one system feeding multiple applications.

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employeesApigee Edge
- Better exception handling with the Raise exception policies help to monitor the flow by setting up the flow conditions.
- Easy development of a Proxy and APIs with much less tutoring and helps make getting started for new users easy.
- Very good documentation and blog with details of most common failures and error handling.
- A very very easy to use console.
Big Data Engineer
Agero, Inc.Automotive, 1001-5000 employees
Cons
Apache Kafka
- The Kafka Tool is a community-made Java application that looks and feels from the past century.
- Logging can be confusing. This certainly shows when we have to do troubleshooting.
- Hybrid scenarios - pub/sub, but there are services in and outside a Kubernetes cluster. Then there are a ~3 options, but only 2 (the harder ones) are production-safe.
DevOps Team Leader
CognyteInformation Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees
Apigee Edge
- Only one user can be active in a proxy at a time
- No version control
- Prohibited from using JSON.stringify on Apigee objects (tokens)
- Debugging is difficult
- Unable to rename or delete policies without bumping revision
- Why would anyone give a js policy one name, display name something else, and script a different name?
- 'Trace' limited to only 20 transactions
- UI allows users to add target servers, but users must utilize the api to turn on SSL.
- I'm sure there's more, they just aren't coming to mind right now.
- Apigee forgets (expires?) your password at random intervals without notice. Every few weeks, or days, sometimes even three times in one day, I'll attempt to login to Apigee and my password will be 'wrong'. I've reset my password and Apigee still claims it's wrong. I've had to reset my password three times before it finally let me log back in.
Software Engineer
Change HealthcareInformation Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees
Pricing Details
Apache Kafka
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Apigee Edge
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Likelihood to Renew
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka 9.0
Based on 1 answer
Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet
Global Technology Centre - Middleware
ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees
Apigee Edge
Apigee Edge 9.0
Based on 1 answer
I am not the one deciding whether to use apigee or not really. But personally, I would recommend the use of it as developing APIs on it is easy. And as a mediator between backend servers, we could easily modify request and responses in it without touching any backend code while having a centralize gateway to access our backend APIs too.
Software Engineer
Novare TechnologiesInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees
Usability
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file
Senior Software Engineer
Accion LabsInformation Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees
Apigee Edge
Apigee Edge 9.0
Based on 1 answer
Support has helped us to resolved all the queries and community support was also good.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 5001-10,000 employeesSupport Rating
Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka 8.6
Based on 7 answers
Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employeesApigee Edge
Apigee Edge 6.0
Based on 2 answers
Quite hard to get support, at least on the coding side, when we encounter blockers. But general concerns, they would schedule a call to you for them to get a whole picture of your concern. Albeit in my experience, bad really as they haven't replied about the progress, but otherwise seems to have been fixed.
Software Engineer
Novare TechnologiesInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees
Alternatives Considered
Apache Kafka
We really needed to get away from using a SQL database to act as a queue for processing records, so a new solution was needed. Kafka is a leading software application initially designed for queuing messages which is essentially what we were looking for. It has a great user community and is used across the industry. We also use and trust several other products from Confluent which helped seal the decision.
Senior System Engineer
NetDocumentsComputer Software, 201-500 employees
Apigee Edge
Apigee is the best in the market in terms of API Analytics Apigee is having wonderful Documentation with short videos Security is a major concern and Apigee provides an easily configurable policy to secure API Quota and rate-limit is again very easy to configure on every API basis It provides various policies to transform the response from one form to another form e.g. JSON to XML or XML to JSON
Associate Director
UBSInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees
Return on Investment
Apache Kafka
- Kafka makes the messaging itself more reliable (as it has the distributed storage by itself and the message doesn't disappear even after it has been consumed).
- Kafka can support a much higher volume use case, without too much extra pressure on the existed hardware.

Verified User
Strategist in Information Technology
Package/Freight Delivery Company, 10,001+ employeesApigee Edge
- As a public entity it is hard to say how much ROI we can have. We have yet to create a billing and ROI plan. We are thinking of other ways to create ROI, possibly through data/service barter.
Application Development Project Manager and GIS Analyst
San Francisco International AirportAirlines/Aviation, 1001-5000 employees