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
18 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>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.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Internet Company, 201-500 employeesConfluent 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.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesPros
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 employeesConfluent Platform
- Products work great.
- Training is available.
- Customer support is good.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesCons
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
Confluent Platform
- Cloud service might need more granular configuration.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesPricing 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
Global Technology Centre - Middleware
ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees
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
Senior Software Engineer
Accion LabsInformation Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees
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.

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employeesConfluent 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.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesAlternatives 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
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.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesReturn 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+ employeesConfluent Platform
- It enables us to develop event driven application.
- It increases our ability to handle streaming data.
- It reduces latency of communication.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employees