Apache Kafka vs Azure API Management

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Internet Company, 201-500 employees

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APIM is useful for the standard scenarios:

1) Securing your back-end APIs - If you have a legacy back-end web service that has a basic authentication scheme, you can add some additional security by placing APIM in front, and requiring subscription keys. Leverage your existing firewall to ensure only your APIM instance can communicate with your back-end API, and you've basically added a layer of protection.

2) Lift and shift - there are always going to be clients that don't want to update their clients to use a newer API; in some cases you can make a newer API look like an older one by implementing some complex policies in APIM. You can also do the opposite, making older APIs look new, such as making an XML back-end accept both JSON and XML.

3) Centralizing your APIs - if you've acquired another company and want to make their API set look as if it's a part of the larger whole, APIM is an easy way to provide a consistent front-end interface for developers.

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Gordon Lo

Digital Solutions Architect

DynacareHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

API access control

Rate limits and usage policies

API usage data

API user onboarding

API versioning

Usage billing and payments

API monitoring and logging

Pros

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.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

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Easy commissioning of APIs.
Great policies to control access.
Easy mock services for testing.

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Verified User

Employee in Corporate

Chemicals Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Still a bit inmature, some clients have required recoding in the last few versions
New feaures coming very fast, several upgrades a year may be required
Not many commercial companies provide support

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Lack of robustness is a bit of an issue. Several other providers offer more options and capabilities, but then, they are lacking in interface ease.
As with anything Azure, pricing is really hard to stay on top of. I always find that you really don’t know what you’re paying for until you get the bill. Having an excellent Azure Administrator can help resolve that.
Integrating with app services outside of Azure can be a challenge, or at least much more challenging than just using Azure App Services.

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Verified User

Manager in Finance and Accounting

Consumer Goods Company, 10,001+ employees

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Likelihood to Renew

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

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Apache Kafka 8.8

Based on 6 answers

We are using the Apache open source version of Kafka. The community is a good place to ask questions. and we can get most of our problems resolved there.

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Verified User

Strategist in Information Technology

Package/Freight Delivery Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

I would only use RabbitMQ over Kafka when you need to have delay queues or tons of small topics/queues around.I don't know too much about Pulsar - currently evaluating it - but it's supposed to have the same or better throughput while allowing for tons of queues. Stay tuned - I might update this review after we finish evaluating Pulsar. It's much less battle-tested though.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Internet Company, 201-500 employees

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Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:

1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.

2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.

3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.

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Gordon Lo

Digital Solutions Architect

DynacareHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Return on Investment

Positive impact on ROI since now we can use one large deployment of Apache Kafka that can be used for multiple scenarios ( storage systems, log aggregate, messaging queue ).
It is open-source so there are no licenses or subscription fees reducing the cost of deployment.
Data can now be ingested and analyzed in real-time making it easy to fine-tune the customer experience and decision making for internal IT.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

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We have one-stop access to all services.
We can stop DDoS, Man in the middle attack, etc.

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Verified User

Employee in Corporate

Chemicals Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Rating Summary

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Likelihood to Recommend

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Feature Rating Comparison

API access control

Rate limits and usage policies

API usage data

API user onboarding

API versioning

Usage billing and payments

API monitoring and logging

Pros

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Cons

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Likelihood to Renew

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Support Rating

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Alternatives Considered

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Return on Investment

Apache Kafka

Azure API Management

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Rating Summary

Add comparison