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Apache Kafka vs Informatica Data Engineering Streaming [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

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

Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (7th)
Informatica Data Engineerin...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Bruno da Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Timestamp, SA
Have worked closely with the team to deploy streaming and transaction pipelines in a flexible cloud environment
The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better. I started working with Apache Kafka from its early days, and I have seen many improvements. The back office functionality could be enhanced. Scaling up continues to be a challenge, though it is much easier now than it was in the beginning.
DK
BI Practice Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Helps with real-time data processing and improves decision-making overall
It improves decision-making overall for the company. Informatica is usually the tool for setting up the data, streaming the data into your data warehouse from your source, transforming the data, and preparing and modeling it into some desired format. It improves the performance. You need to know how to use it and how to implement it, but it improves performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The processing power of Apache Kafka is good when you have requirements for high throughput and a large number of consumers."
"The use of Kafka's logging mechanism has been extremely beneficial for us, as it allows us to sequence messages, track pointers, and manage memory without having to create multiple copies."
"Robust and delivers messages quickly."
"Apache Kafka is scalable. It is easy to add brokers."
"Good horizontal scaling and design."
"It is the performance that is really meaningful."
"The most valuable feature is the support for a high volume of data."
"The most valuable features are the stream API, consumer groups, and the way that the scaling takes place."
"It improves the performance."
 

Cons

"While the solution scales well and easily, you need to understand your future needs and prep for the peaks."
"They need to have a proper portal to do everything because, at this moment, Kafka is lagging in this regard."
"Kafka 2.0 has been released for over a month, and I wanted to try out the new features. However, the configuration is a little bit complicated: Kafka Broker, Kafka Manager, ZooKeeper Servers, etc."
"One complexity that I faced with the tool stems from the fact that since it is not kind of a stand-alone application, it won't integrate with native cloud, like AWS or Azure."
"Something that could be improved is having an interface to monitor the consuming rate."
"Apache Kafka can improve by making the documentation more user-friendly. It would be beneficial if we could explain to customers in more detail how the solution operates but the documentation get highly technical quickly. For example, if they had a simple page where we can show the customers how it works without the need for the customer to have a computer science background."
"Confluent has improved aspects like documentation and cloud support, yet Kafka's reliance on older architectures like ZooKeeper in previous versions is a limitation."
"The interface has room for improvement, and there is a steep learning curve for Hadoop integration. It was a struggle learning to send from Hadoop to Kafka. In future releases, I'd like to see improvements in ETL functionality and Hadoop integration."
"Skill requirement is required. There is a learning curve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source."
"This is an open-source solution and is free to use."
"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. For on-premise, there is an annual fee, which starts at 60,000 euros, but it is usually higher than 100,000 euros. The cost for a project including the subscription is usually between 100,000 to 200,000 euros. The cost also depends on the level of support. There are two different levels of support."
"The cost can vary depending on the provider and the specific flavor or version you use. I'm not very knowledgeable about the pricing details."
"We use the free version."
"Apache Kafka is an open-sourced solution. There are fees if you want the support, and I would recommend it for enterprises. There are annual subscriptions available."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise49
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
What needs improvement with Apache Kafka?
The long-term data storage feature in Apache Kafka depends on the setting, but I believe the maximum duration is seven days.
What needs improvement with Informatica Data Engineering Streaming?
Skill requirement is required. There is a learning curve.
What is your primary use case for Informatica Data Engineering Streaming?
We implement business intelligence solutions, including data warehousing tools, data integration to load data into warehouses, and then creating reports.
What advice do you have for others considering Informatica Data Engineering Streaming?
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. Usually, Informatica is for big clients because of its pricing, and it also requires some skill sets. It requires investment into a proper da...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Big Data Streaming, Informatica Intelligent Streaming, Intelligent Streaming
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Jewelry TV
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