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Apache Kafka vs Redpanda comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redpanda
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 4.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Kafka4.0%
Redpanda1.9%
Other94.1%
Streaming Analytics
 

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.
ArpitShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Analyst at CLSA
Event streaming has simplified video data cleanup and now powers real-time analytics
One area for improvement is providing more examples. For instance, Redpanda could be more useful as a sink where you get the data and can directly push to S3. While this is possible through the API, there are better and faster ways to do it. You can make a million API calls and accomplish the task in one and a half hours, but the same thing can be done in ten minutes through other methods. These faster approaches are not documented in obvious places. You have to find information scattered across various blogs. Redpanda should collect all the good blogs and best practices and put them in their documentation. This is more about knowledge management and making it easy for users to understand the product for complex use cases. For simple use cases, it is straightforward. We all use the basic pipe functionality. However, providing more examples would be useful. For example, integration with AWS and the AWS ecosystem would be cool.

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 solution scales horizontally and scales better than its competitors."
"This is a system for email and other small devices, and there has been a relay of transactions continuously over the last two years it has been in production."
"In our current position, we use it to move a lot of data and I think it's definitely working well."
"Apache Kafka is very fast and stable."
"Kafka is good, but Kafka as a cloud service is awesome!!"
"Apache Kafka is actually a distributed commit log. That is different than most messaging and queuing systems before it."
"When comparing it with other messaging and integration platforms, this is one of the best rated."
"I would recommend Redpanda to others because it's easy to set up, consumes less resources, and is stable compared to other tools."
"If our infrastructure goes down for a week, we will not lose data."
"Redpanda is developer-friendly, and we need to do much less configuration because Redpanda provides out-of-the-box configuration for us."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++. C++ is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
"The UI is modern."
"Redpanda was simple and fast, so we went with Redpanda and it just works."
"Aside from its lightweight design, Redpanda is essentially a clone of Kafka with all the good features of Kafka, with the only difference being that Kafka needs too many resources while Redpanda is a very good, lightweight, and very fast database."
"What makes Redpanda superior is its performance since it's written in C++, which is pretty much the standard for high-performance applications."
 

Cons

"The third party is not very stable and sometimes you have problems with this component."
"The management tool could be improved."
"They need to have a proper portal to do everything because, at this moment, Kafka is lagging in this regard."
"Apache Kafka can improve by providing a UI for monitoring."
"The management overhead is more compared to the messaging system. There are challenges here and there. Like for long usage, it requires restarts and nodes from time to time."
"In the next release, I would like for there to be some authorization features and HTL security; we also need bigger software and better monitoring."
"The user interface is one weakness. Sometimes, our data isn't as accessible as we'd like. It takes a lot of work to retrieve the data and the index."
"The product could be improved with proper documentation."
"The version control mechanism must be improved."
"I think Redpanda is overall very good for us, and I am uncertain whether Redpanda can scale to very large companies as we are a medium-sized startup."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"One area for improvement is providing more examples."
"The command-line tools need to be improved. To quickly check the status of the topics and all."
"When it comes to self-hosting, their documentation could be improved."
"The version control mechanism must be improved."
"In Redpanda, the areas that have room for improvement are in the clustering part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is open source software."
"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 more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"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."
"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."
"I was using the product's free version."
"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."
"Redpanda is cheaper than its competitors."
"It's free. Everybody can use it, only support is paid."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?
In terms of pricing, Redpanda is free. We do not have to pay anything. It is not open source, but it is free.
What needs improvement with Redpanda?
In Redpanda, the areas that have room for improvement are in the clustering part. Setting up clustering initially is very easy. However, if you are removing a node and attaching another node, signi...
What is your primary use case for Redpanda?
Redpanda serves two primary purposes for our organization. First, we use it as a drop-in replacement for Kafka. Second, we utilize it for streaming analytics. We do not use Redpanda for IoT data st...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Redpanda and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.