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Apache Kafka vs Informatica Data Engineering Streaming [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

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

"In our current position, we use it to move a lot of data and I think it's definitely working well."
"Supports more than 10,000 events/second, scalability, and replication, and it is a good product for event-driven architecture."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"Apache Kafka has good integration capabilities and has plenty of adapters in its ecosystem if you want to build something. There are adapters for many platforms, such as Java, Azure, and Microsoft's ecosystem. Other solutions, such as Pulsar have fewer adapters available."
"The most valuable features to me are replication, partitioning and easy integration with Apache Spark, which we use quite a bit for distributed processing."
"Deployment is speedy."
"It's an open-source product, which means it doesn't cost us anything to use it."
"It improves the performance."
 

Cons

"The manageability should be improved. There are lots of things we need to manage and it should have a function that enables us to manage them all cohesively."
"The standard Kafka Java library, which is shipped with the product, is too complex for inexperienced users."
"It's not possible to substitute IBM MQ with Apache Kafka because the JMS part is not very stable."
"In the next release, I would like for there to be some authorization and HTL security."
"Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring."
"Too much dependency on the zookeeper and leader selection is still the bottleneck for Kafka implementation."
"Kafka has some limitations in terms of queue management."
"I suggest using cloud services because the solution is expensive if you are using it on-premises."
"Skill requirement is required. There is a learning curve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"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."
"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."
"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"It is open source software."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Government
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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