Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Apache Kafka vs SAS Event Stream Processing 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
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Event Stream Processing
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 4.2%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Event Stream Processing is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Kafka4.2%
SAS Event Stream Processing0.9%
Other94.9%
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.
Roi Jason Buela - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Technical Consultant at Thakral One
A solution with useful windowing features and great for operations and marketing
The persistence could be better. Although ESP is designed for in-memory processing, it would be better if the solution is enhanced or improved on the persistence of the data that is kept in the memory. For example, if one server goes down and the information is stored in the memory, it is lost. Therefore, the persistence needs to be improved so that if there are more cases where the server is down, the information and data can still be intact.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kafka can process messages in real-time, making it useful for applications that require near-instantaneous processing."
"With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions."
"The valuable features are the group community and support."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"The processing power of Apache Kafka is good when you have requirements for high throughput and a large number of consumers."
"Kafka allows you to handle huge amounts of data and classify it into different categories. If you have huge amounts of data, Kafka is a very good solution for data classification."
"When comparing it with other messaging and integration platforms, this is one of the best rated."
"This is a system for email and other small devices. There has been a relay of transactions continuously over the last two years it has been in production."
"The solution is beneficial on an enterprise level."
 

Cons

"The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better."
"The GUI tools for monitoring and support are still very basic and not very rich. There is no help in determining a shard key for performance."
"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."
"Kafka is complex and there is a little bit of a learning curve."
"Confluent has improved aspects like documentation and cloud support, yet Kafka's reliance on older architectures like ZooKeeper in previous versions is a limitation."
"An area for improvement would be growth."
"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 third party is not very stable and sometimes you have problems with this component. There are some developments in newer versions and we're about to try them out, but I'm not sure if it closes the gap."
"The persistence could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"The solution is free, it is open-source."
"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"We use the free version."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Honda, HSBC, Lufthansa, Nestle, 89Degrees.
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: February 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.