What users are saying about

Apache Kafka vs Confluent Platform

Apache Kafka
97 Ratings
Confluent Platform
18 Ratings

Apache Kafka

97 Ratings
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Score 9.1 out of 100

Based on 97 reviews and ratings

Confluent Platform

18 Ratings
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Score 9.2 out of 100

Based on 18 reviews and ratings

Feature Set Ratings

    Streaming Analytics

    Apache Kafka

    Feature Set Not Supported
    N/A
    10.0

    Confluent Platform

    100%
    Confluent Platform ranks higher in 6/6 features
    Confluent Platform ranks higher in 6/6 features

    Real-Time Data Analysis

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Visualization Dashboards

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Data Ingestion from Multiple Data Sources

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Low Latency

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Integrated Development Tools

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Linear Scale-Out

    N/A
    0 Ratings
    10.0
    100%
    1 Rating

    Attribute Ratings

    • Confluent Platform is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating

    Likelihood to Recommend

    9.3

    Apache Kafka

    93%
    13 Ratings
    10.0

    Confluent Platform

    100%
    1 Rating

    Likelihood to Renew

    9.0

    Apache Kafka

    90%
    1 Rating

    Confluent Platform

    N/A
    0 Ratings

    Usability

    10.0

    Apache Kafka

    100%
    1 Rating

    Confluent Platform

    N/A
    0 Ratings

    Support Rating

    8.6

    Apache Kafka

    86%
    7 Ratings
    10.0

    Confluent Platform

    100%
    1 Rating

    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.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
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    Confluent Platform

    If your company needs to build event-driven applications, like in healthcare industry, you need to enhance interoperability, and you are seeking a reliable service with enterprise-grade support, Confluent is the best on the market you can get. Their product works great and they provide very good customer service.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    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.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
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    Confluent Platform

    • Products work great.
    • Training is available.
    • Customer support is good.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    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.

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    Borislav Traykov | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Borislav Traykov
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    Confluent Platform

    • Cloud service might need more granular configuration.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    Pricing Details

    Apache Kafka

    General

    Free Trial
    —
    Free/Freemium Version
    —
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    —
    Entry-level set up fee?
    No

    Starting Price

    —

    Confluent Platform

    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

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    Juan Francisco Tavira | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Juan Francisco Tavira
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    Confluent Platform

    No score
    No answers yet
    No answers on this topic

    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

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    Jimesh V Shah | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Jimesh V Shah
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    Confluent Platform

    No score
    No answers yet
    No answers on this topic

    Support 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.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 7 answers on this topic

    Confluent Platform

    Confluent Platform 10.0
    Based on 1 answer
    The support from the Confluent platform is great and satisfying. We have been working with Confluent for more than a year now. They sent out resident architects to help us set up Confluent cluster on our cloud and help us troubleshoot problems we have encountered. Overall, it has been a great experience working with the Confluent Platform.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
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    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.

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    Tyler Twitchell | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Tyler Twitchell
    View all 13 answers on this topic

    Confluent Platform

    We chose to use the Confluent Platform because they provide enterprise-grade customer service support. Whenever we have trouble setting up or using the service, we can create a ticket for them and it will be resolved pretty fast. Kafka is the open-source software that comes without warranty.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 1 answers on this topic

    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.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
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    Confluent Platform

    • It enables us to develop event driven application.
    • It increases our ability to handle streaming data.
    • It reduces latency of communication.

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    Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Verified User
    View all 1 answers on this topic

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