Apache Kafka vs. Databricks Lakehouse Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Kafka
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Apache Kafka is an open-source stream processing platform developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala and Java. The Kafka event streaming platform is used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications.N/A
Databricks Lakehouse Platform
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Databricks in San Francisco offers the Databricks Lakehouse Platform (formerly the Unified Analytics Platform), a data science platform and Apache Spark cluster manager. The Databricks Unified Data Service aims to provide a reliable and scalable platform for data pipelines, data lakes, and data platforms. Users can manage full data journey, to ingest, process, store, and expose data throughout an organization. Its Data Science Workspace is a collaborative environment for practitioners to run…
$0.07
Per DBU
Pricing
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$0.07
Per DBU
Premium
$0.10
Per DBU
Enterprise
$0.13
Per DBU
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Considered Both Products
Apache Kafka
Chose Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka is open-sourced, scales great has cloud agnostics and performs better than Amazon Kinesis [in my view]. Amazon Kinesis has some limitations and vendor lockin is not something I [like]. With Confluent operators you can easily install it on a kubernetes cluster.
Databricks Lakehouse Platform

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
IBM MQ
IBM MQ
Score 9.0 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM MQ
IBM MQ
Score 9.0 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(18 ratings)
8.4
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(4 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache KafkaDatabricks Lakehouse Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.
Read full review
Databricks
If you need a managed big data megastore, which has native integration with highly optimized Apache Spark Engine and native integration with MLflow, go for Databricks Lakehouse Platform. The Databricks Lakehouse Platform is a breeze to use and analytics capabilities are supported out of the box. You will find it a bit difficult to manage code in notebooks but you will get used to it soon.
Read full review
Pros
Apache
  • Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
  • Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
  • Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).
Read full review
Databricks
  • Process raw data in One Lake (S3) env to relational tables and views
  • Share notebooks with our business analysts so that they can use the queries and generate value out of the data
  • Try out PySpark and Spark SQL queries on raw data before using them in our Spark jobs
  • Modern day ETL operations made easy using Databricks. Provide access mechanism for different set of customers
Read full review
Cons
Apache
  • Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
  • Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
  • Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified
Read full review
Databricks
  • Connect my local code in Visual code to my Databricks Lakehouse Platform cluster so I can run the code on the cluster. The old databricks-connect approach has many bugs and is hard to set up. The new Databricks Lakehouse Platform extension on Visual Code, doesn't allow the developers to debug their code line by line (only we can run the code).
  • Maybe have a specific Databricks Lakehouse Platform IDE that can be used by Databricks Lakehouse Platform users to develop locally.
  • Visualization in MLFLOW experiment can be enhanced
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet
Read full review
Databricks
No answers on this topic
Usability
Apache
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
Read full review
Databricks
Because it is an amazing platform for designing experiments and delivering a deep dive analysis that requires execution of highly complex queries, as well as it allows to share the information and insights across the company with their shared workspaces, while keeping it secured.

in terms of graph generation and interaction it could improve their UI and UX
Read full review
Support Rating
Apache
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.
Read full review
Databricks
One of the best customer and technology support that I have ever experienced in my career. You pay for what you get and you get the Rolls Royce. It reminds me of the customer support of SAS in the 2000s when the tools were reaching some limits and their engineer wanted to know more about what we were doing, long before "data science" was even a name. Databricks truly embraces the partnership with their customer and help them on any given challenge.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Apache
I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.
Read full review
Databricks
Compared to Synapse & Snowflake, Databricks provides a much better development experience, and deeper configuration capabilities. It works out-of-the-box but still allows you intricate customisation of the environment. I find Databricks very flexible and resilient at the same time while Synapse and Snowflake feel more limited in terms of configuration and connectivity to external tools.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apache
  • Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
  • Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
  • Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.
Read full review
Databricks
  • The ability to spin up a BIG Data platform with little infrastructure overhead allows us to focus on business value not admin
  • DB has the ability to terminate/time out instances which helps manage cost.
  • The ability to quickly access typical hard to build data scenarios easily is a strength.
Read full review
ScreenShots