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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 solution is very scalable. We started with a cluster of three and then scaled it to seven."
"Kafka can process messages in real-time, making it useful for applications that require near-instantaneous processing."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"Kafka provides us with a way to store the data used for analytics. That's the big selling point. There's very good log management."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing."
"The most valuable feature is the performance."
"It eases our current data flow and framework."
"Kafka makes data streaming asynchronous and decouples the reliance of events on consumers."
"It improves the performance."
 

Cons

"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."
"More adapters for connecting to different systems need to be available."
"Kafka requires non-trivial expertise with DevOps to deploy in production at scale. The organization needs to understand ZooKeeper and Kafka and should consider using additional tools, such as MirrorMaker, so that the organization can survive an availability zone or a region going down."
"The initial setup and deployment could be less complex."
"The model where you create the integration or the integration scenario needs improvement."
"For personal preferences, since we use Managed Kafka in AWS, I would appreciate having some kind of UI integrated into Apache Kafka for connecting to it because using code to connect it is basic, but we can use a UI."
"Config management can be better."
"Scalability may cause issues in the product if my nodes are full with multiple sources and delivery is slowing down."
"Skill requirement is required. There is a learning curve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Apache Kafka is good."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"It is open source software."
"I rate Apache Kafka's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees for Apache Kafka."
"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
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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