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Aiven Platform vs Confluent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Aiven Platform
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Confluent is 8.5%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Confluent8.5%
Aiven Platform1.7%
Other89.8%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

NM
Seamlessly handle database upgrades and minimize downtime disruptions
One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades. It also provides reliable backups. The ability to minimize disruption during upgrades is very important since any database downtime would mean system-wide disruptions.
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades."
"What I like best about the tool is that the process for the services is faster compared to other methods. It's easier to use because Aiven for Apache Kafka handles the maintenance, so we have less to manage. We only use Kafka to manage its connectivity."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"The client APIs are the most valuable feature."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
 

Cons

"One challenge we face is when we want to update the version, for example, from 3.6 to 3.7. It will spawn new nodes, and then there's rebalancing and syncing from other brokers. There's high CPU usage during this process, so the solution can't be used for a while, causing some downtime in our services. To tackle this challenge, we schedule maintenance updates during low-traffic periods when there's less risk and fewer users use the services."
"I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"The Schema Registry service could be improved. I would like a bigger knowledge base of other use cases and more technical forums. It would be good to have more flexible monitoring features added to the next release as well."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"There is a limitation when it comes to seamlessly importing Microsoft documents into Confluent pages, which can be inconvenient for users who frequently work with Microsoft Office tools and need to transition their content to Confluent."
"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"It comes with a high cost."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Hospitality Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aiven for Apache Kafka?
I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution. Additionally, the customer service could be more re...
What is your primary use case for Aiven for Apache Kafka?
Our primary use case is having our PostgreSQL and MySQL databases hosted by Aiven Platform. They serve as our production databases.
What advice do you have for others considering Aiven for Apache Kafka?
In our experience, we encountered issues with Aiven Platform's connection to Redis. It was not smooth, and though we like the solution overall, we are hesitant about using Redis integration again. ...
What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
People do not appreciate that Confluent is pushing us more towards Teams because they want to use a true Microsoft Word-type format where we can format our sentences better, instead of just saying ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about Aiven Platform vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.