Amazon MSK vs Redpanda comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Redpanda Data are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.4, while Redpanda Data is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.1% mindshare in SA, compared to Redpanda Data’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Redpanda Data users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,237 Views
2,192 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Redpanda

Read 4 Redpanda reviews

619 Views
607 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Redpanda

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Amazon MSK and Redpanda compete in the data streaming platform category. Redpanda is viewed as having the advantage owing to its low-latency streaming and simplicity.

Features: Amazon MSK integrates seamlessly with AWS services and provides secure data encryption and automated monitoring tools. Its design aids in separation of concerns and simplifies the deployment of new features. Redpanda's single-binary architecture enhances performance, reduces maintenance, and is compatible with Kafka APIs, ensuring flexibility and efficiency for high-throughput requirements.

Room for Improvement: Amazon MSK's reliance on the AWS ecosystem may require better onboarding for users unfamiliar with AWS. The simplification of pricing structures could help users project costs more accurately. Improvement in user interface intuitiveness would enhance user satisfaction. Redpanda could boost its community support network further and expand its documentation for more diverse use cases. It could benefit from more extensive enterprise-level support options. Ensuring smoother integrations with other platforms beyond Kafka-compatible solutions would widen its adoption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon MSK offers streamlined deployment through the AWS Console, benefitting from AWS's scalability, though requiring familiarity with the AWS environment. It provides extensive documentation and support tracks. Redpanda allows rapid on-premise deployment with an easy setup, focusing on hands-on customer service. Its direct technical support is appealing for developers emphasizing personalized assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon MSK utilizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model aligned with AWS's cost structures, ideal for businesses heavily integrated within AWS. However, cost management can become complex with heavy AWS usage. Redpanda is priced competitively to reduce latency and operational costs, offering a favorable ROI for efficient streaming. Its pricing model caters to businesses focusing on cost-effective performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

December 2025

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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 MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Redpanda

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

17th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 5.1%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon MSK	5.1%
Redpanda	1.7%
Other	93.2%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

Improved data streaming and integration challenges prompt search for alternatives

The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are not very flexible. If you have your own self-managed Kafka, that helps significantly because you can set up configurations. We are considering self-managed Kafka since our product is only one year old. The Kafka integrations are fine, but the configurations are an issue. The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case. The product could improve by allowing us to set different configurations. I would also like to see Amazon MSK improve in the area of connectors. We are considering Confluent Cloud because they have many more connectors. They have KSQL DB and governance features. It is slightly costlier, but Confluent offers more flexibility with their connectors.

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ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

Affordable, easy to deploy, and it is easy to find things on the user interface

We use the libraries in the different programming languages. We use the message format in Avro, convert the data in the format, and pass it on. We have contacted the sales team about the solution. So far, the product fulfills our requirements. We get lots of data. The data flows through Kafka to Redpanda. Then it goes to a database. If our infrastructure goes down for a week, we will not lose data. It is an advantage of Redpanda. I recommend the product to others. We might choose a different solution if we find something cheaper. We used Redpanda because we did not want to self-host our software. Redpanda is a piece of infrastructure. There is not much of a learning curve. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon MSK has contributed positively to our real-time analytics capabilities because Fortis's dashboards have dashboard health that needs to be maintained, user logs that need to be maintained, and usage tracking."

"Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This"

"The solution's technical support was helpful."

"It is a stable product."

"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."

"What I appreciate most about Amazon MSK is that it doesn't require extensive concern about the configurations; it starts checking how the brokers are functioning, and automatically, Amazon MSK tries to resolve all the problems."

"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."

More Amazon MSK pros

"The UI is modern."

"The cost savings have been significant."

"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."

"I tested it with ten-plus nodes, and it's highly scalable."

Cons

"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."

"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."

"The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case."

"It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster."

"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."

"In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation."

"It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers."

"It should be more flexible, integration-wise."

More Amazon MSK cons

"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."

"The version control mechanism must be improved."

"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."

"Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."

"When you create a complete enterprise-driven architecture that is deployable on an enterprise scale, I would say that the prices of Amazon MSK and Confluent Platform become comparable."

"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."

"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."

"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	4

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?

We are recently working with Amazon MSK at Fortis, where we have multiple dashboards in our revenue intelligence platform. We are streaming data from different apps into those dashboards. The data ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon MSK?

We are working with Amazon MSK product, Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka. The main benefits I have seen from using Amazon MSK is that as a B2B enterprise client, we have many SLAs to fulfill. Tra...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?

Redpanda is actually a commercial platform, but they do provide free versions as well. I've been working only with the free versions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Redpanda?

Recently, for the documentation, they've built their own AI chatbot, which is focused on giving you answers based on their documentation. While using that, I did not find it to be very good. Maybe ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Redpanda?

I have worked with Redpanda for the past two to three months. Mainly in the tech industry or software industry, there's a huge rise of streaming data. Redpanda serves as a very reliable and fast me...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 12% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 10% of the time

Aiven Platform vs Amazon MSK

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 8% of the time

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Amazon Kinesis vs Redpanda

Compared 34% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Redpanda

Compared 21% of the time

StreamNative vs Redpanda

Compared 14% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs Redpanda

Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

February 2026

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Redpanda

January 2026

Download Redpanda product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

No data available

Overview

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a fully managed service that enables you to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka to process streaming data. Amazon MSK provides the control-plane operations, such as those for creating, updating, and deleting clusters.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Redpanda offers a modern, intuitive interface with efficient resource usage, seamlessly integrating with Kafka, and enhancing performance through fast operations and reliable support. Organizations benefit from its memory efficiency and high performance for demanding data workloads.

Built on a C++ foundation, Redpanda integrates easily with Kafka clients and stands out for fast operations, simplified Docker setup, and effective metrics monitoring. Performance is enhanced by memory efficiency and high throughput capabilities. The community provides robust support, and clear documentation aids the adoption process. However, improvements could be made in version control, command-line tools, and documentation, particularly in areas such as automation file management and chatbot documentation assistance. Redpanda is widely utilized in data streaming and normalization, efficiently handling large telemetry data volumes with minimal latency, essential for building asynchronous applications across microservices and monitoring systems.

What are the most important features of Redpanda?

Modern UI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Efficient Resource Usage: Built on C++ for performance optimization.
Seamless Integration: Works well with Kafka clients for smooth operations.
Simplified Setup: Docker templates facilitate easy installation.
Built-in Metrics Exporters: Enhance monitoring and visibility.
High Performance: Ensures memory efficiency and quick data processing.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Fast Operations: Accelerates data processing for efficient workflows.
Reliable Support: Strong community aids troubleshooting and development.
Clear Documentation: Helps users quickly onboard and manage Redpanda.
Low Latency: Critical for applications requiring quick response times.
Sub-second Response: Supports demanding performance and latency needs.

Redpanda is commonly implemented in tech and software industries to streamline data streaming and normalization processes, handling high telemetry data volumes effectively. Its capacity for sub-second response times makes it crucial for companies developing asynchronous applications, especially in microservices and monitoring systems.

Redpanda Data

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

December 2025

Free Report: Amazon MSK vs. Redpanda

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