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Apache Kafka vs Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Apache Kafka and Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Apache Kafka is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, up 2.3% compared to last year.
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS, on the other hand, focuses on Message Queue (MQ) Software, holds 1.1% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka4.0%
Apache Flink11.3%
Databricks9.5%
Other75.2%
Streaming Analytics
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS1.1%
IBM MQ22.9%
ActiveMQ22.4%
Other53.6%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

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.
AR
System Administrator at BH Bank
It's scalable and easy to use, and we have local support here in Tunisia
We have an application-presentation layer, and we use JBoss to communicate with the application layer. The interceptors use Active MQ.  JBoss is easy to use, and we have a good partner here in Tunisia to provide local support.  JBoss could add more automation. We have been using JBoss for five…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability is very nice. We currently manage 50 million events daily."
"Robust and delivers messages quickly."
"Kafka's most valuable feature is its user-friendliness."
"The solution is very scalable. We started with a cluster of three and then scaled it to seven."
"It seemed pretty stable and didn't have any issues at all."
"The main advantage is increased reliability, particularly with regard to data and the speed with which messages are published to the other side."
"I like Kafka's flexibility, stability, reliability, and robustness."
"It is easy to configure."
"JBoss is easy to use, and we have a good partner here in Tunisia to provide local support."
 

Cons

"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"The solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release."
"Kafka is complex and there is a little bit of a learning curve."
"An area for improvement would be growth."
"Kafka has some limitations in terms of queue management."
"We cannot apply all of our security requirements because it is hard to upload them."
"There have been some challenges with monitoring Apache Kafka, as there are currently only a few production-grade solutions available, which are all under enterprise license and therefore not easily accessible. The speaker has not had access to any of these solutions and has instead relied on tools, such as Dynatrace, which do not provide sufficient insight into the Apache Kafka system. While there are other tools available, they do not offer the same level of real-time data as enterprise solutions."
"The graphical user environment is currently lacking."
"JBoss could add more automation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"It is open source software."
"We use the free version."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."
"The price of Apache Kafka is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
No data available
 

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.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: January 2026.
881,821 professionals have used our research since 2012.