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Amazon Kinesis vs Apache Spark Streaming comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

Amazon Kinesis
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon Kinesis is 8.0%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark Streaming is 2.6%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Pipeline setup is very simple
I am not exactly sure about where improvements are needed in the tool. When I was working on the tool, it was very scalable, and the only thing we needed in our company was temporary streaming stuff that could work well. We didn't want to set up our own Kafka, other queues, or processing systems. As it is a cloud tool, it is easy for us to use the tool, and it satisfies all our requirements. Maybe for the other cases, if we need, then it may need some improvements. The tool satisfies our particular needs. Currently, the pipeline setup is very simple. For our particular use cases, it is because we just want to get the data and send it to the different data lakes or some logging system. Previously, we also used Amazon Kinesis to log those to Splunk, and later on, we removed Splunk and transferred that to Datadog. For our use cases, I don't want any new features in the tool. Amazon Kinesis' use case is for collecting, processing, and analyzing. If anything can be added to the tool, then I feel one should be able to use the same kind of tool so that everything is there in the product, like an alert system, and so that one can analyze, make a query, and do sourcing from the solution itself rather than using other logging and monitoring systems. The tool should focus on having an alert system rather than having to use a third-party solution. We can just get the data over Amazon Kinesis, and we can directly use all the benefits of current analytical tools, like in the areas involving BI, Looker, and Tableau. One would not need to buy the aforementioned tools, and we can just get started with Amazon Kinesis.
Oscar Estorach - PeerSpot reviewer
Versatile and flexible when dealing with large-scale data streams
What I like about Spark is its versatility in supporting multiple languages and that makes it my preferred choice for building scalable and efficient systems, whether it is hooking databases with web applications or handling large-scale data transformations. Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows. It works well in the cloud, and you can structure data using Databricks or Spark, providing flexibility for different projects. Spark Streaming's flexibility shines when dealing with large-scale data streams. It caters to different needs, offering real-time insights for tasks like online sales analytics. The ability to prioritize data streams is valuable, especially for monitoring competitor prices online.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature that I've found most valuable is the replay. That is one of the most valuable in our business. We are business-to-business so replay was an important feature - being able to replay for 24 hours. That's an important feature."
"The Kinesis VideoStream and DataStream are the most important features."
"Everything is hosted and simple."
"There is no problem with the tool's stability."
"From my experience, one of the most valuable features is the ability to track silent events on endpoints. Previously, these events might have gone unnoticed, but now we can access them within the product range. For example, if a customer reports that their calls are not reaching the portal files, we can use this feature to troubleshoot and optimize the system."
"What turns out to be most valuable is its integration with Lambda functions because you can process the data as it comes in. As soon as data comes, you'll fire a Lambda function to process a trench of data."
"I like the ease of use and how we can quickly get the configurations done, making it pretty straightforward and stable."
"The solution's technical support is flawless."
"As an open-source solution, using it is basically free."
"It's the fastest solution on the market with low latency data on data transformations."
"Spark Streaming is critical, quite stable, full-featured, and scalable."
"The solution is very stable and reliable."
"The platform’s most valuable feature for processing real-time data is its ability to handle continuous data streams."
"Apache Spark Streaming has features like checkpointing and Streaming API that are useful."
"Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows."
"Apache Spark's capabilities for machine learning are quite extensive and can be used in a low-code way."
 

Cons

"AI processing or cleaning up data would be nice since I don't think it is a feature in Amazon Kinesis right now."
"Something else to mention is that we use Kinesis with Lambda a lot and the fact that you can only connect one Stream to one Lambda, I find is a limiting factor. I would definitely recommend to remove that constraint."
"I suggest integrating additional features, such as incorporating Amazon Pinpoint or Amazon Connect as bundled offerings, rather than deploying them as separate services."
"Kinesis Data Analytics needs to be improved somewhat. It's SQL based data but it is not as user friendly as MySQL or Athena tools."
"Could include features that make it easier to scale."
"In order to do a successful setup, the person handling the implementation needs to know the solution very well. You can't just come into it blind and with little to no experience."
"Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes."
"If there were better documentation on optimal sharding strategies then it would be helpful."
"Integrating event-level streaming capabilities could be beneficial."
"We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws."
"The solution itself could be easier to use."
"There could be an improvement in the area of the user configuration section, it should be less developer-focused and more business user-focused."
"In terms of improvement, the UI could be better."
"It was resource-intensive, even for small-scale applications."
"The debugging aspect could use some improvement."
"We would like to have the ability to do arbitrary stateful functions in Python."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on the use cases and the level of usage. If you wanted to use Kinesis for different use cases, there's definitely a cheaper base cost involved. However, it's not entirely cheap, as different use cases might require different levels of Kinesis usage."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The fee is based on the number of hours the service is running."
"The product falls on a bit of an expensive side."
"In general, cloud services are very convenient to use, even if we have to pay a bit more, as we know what we are paying for and can focus on other tasks."
"Amazon Kinesis pricing is sometimes reasonable and sometimes could be better, depending on the planning, so it's a five out of ten for me."
"Amazon Kinesis is an expensive solution."
"The tool's entry price is cheap. However, pricing increases with data volume."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, or not cost-effective, and ten is cheap, I rate the price a seven."
"I was using the open-source community version, which was self-hosted."
"People pay for Apache Spark Streaming as a service."
"Spark is an affordable solution, especially considering its open-source nature."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
4%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
5%
University
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis's main purpose is to provide near real-time data streaming at a consistent 2Mbps rate, which is really impressive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis and Lambda pricing is competitive, but we noticed that scaling and large volumes could potentially increase costs significantly.
What needs improvement with Amazon Kinesis?
Amazon Kinesis could improve its pricing to be more competitive, especially for large volumes. Also, the KCL library's documentation could be improved to better explain the configuration parameters...
What do you like most about Apache Spark Streaming?
Apache Spark Streaming is versatile. You can use it for competitive intelligence, gathering data from competitors, or for internal tasks like monitoring workflows.
What needs improvement with Apache Spark Streaming?
We don't have enough experience to be judgmental about its flaws, as we've only used stable features like batch micro-batch. Integration poses no problem; however, I don't use some features and can...
What is your primary use case for Apache Spark Streaming?
We use Spark Streaming in a micro-batch region. It's not a full real-time system, but it offers high performance and low latency.
 

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Kinesis, AWS Kinesis, Kinesis
Spark Streaming
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Zillow, Netflix, Sonos
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, eBay Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Kinesis vs. Apache Spark Streaming and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.