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Apache Kafka vs Spring Cloud Data Flow 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
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 4.0%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 3.8%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka4.0%
Spring Cloud Data Flow3.8%
Other92.2%
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.
LN
Senior Software Engineer at QBE Regional Insurance
Provides ease of integration with other cloud platforms
Spring Cloud Data Flow is a useful product if I consider how there are different providers with whom my company had to deal, and most of them offer cloud-based products. I can't explain any crucial circumstances where the product's integration capabilities were helpful, but the aforementioned details explain the scenario for which I used the solution. I was only involved with the development of the product and not with the data pipeline configuration phase. The use of Spring Cloud Data Flow greatly impacted projects' time to market since our company's intention was to actually deploy and ensure that the payment platform integrated with it, which was an easy process. The product's user interface was very intuitive. The tool was deployed in multiple environments, but I am not sure about the production. From the time I started taking up the job in my current organization, I saw that we have deployed the tool in multiple environments wherein the number of users extensively used the product in the UAT environment, which is one of the most stable environments. There were 20 different methods to test the tool. I wouldn't be able to tell you the production details of the tool as I was more part of the production deployment, but I can say that it was deployed with the intent of making it available for 10,000 users. Those who plan to use the product should enjoy the flexibility of the solution. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate that Apache Kafka is fast and secure thanks to implementing it with AWS, allowing me to secure it on a high level."
"The most valuable feature is the documentation, which is good and clear."
"A great streaming platform."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing."
"There are numerous possibilities that can be explored. While it may be challenging to fully comprehend the potential advantages, one key aspect is the ability to establish a proper sequence of events rather than simply dealing with a jumbled group of occurrences. These events possess their own timestamps, even if they were not initially provided with one, and are arranged in a chronological order that allows for a clear understanding of the progression of the events."
"I like the performance and reliability of Kafka. I needed a data streaming buffer that could handle thousands of messages per second with at least one processing point for an analytics pipeline. Kafka fits this requirement very well."
"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."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
"The most valuable features of Spring Cloud Data Flow are the simple programming model, integration, dependency Injection, and ability to do any injection. Additionally, auto-configuration is another important feature because we don't have to configure the database and or set up the boilerplate in the database in every project. The composability is good, we can create small workloads and compose them in any way we like."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"There are a lot of options in Spring Cloud. It's flexible in terms of how we can use it. It's a full infrastructure."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it allows us to use different batch data sources, retrieve the data, and then do the data processing, after which we can convert and store it in the target."
"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."
"The ease of deployment on Kubernetes, the seamless integration for orchestration of various pipelines, and the visual dashboard that simplifies operations even for non-specialists such as quality analysts."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
 

Cons

"We haven't seen a return on investment with Apache Kafka. It's used for a specific use case rather than cost reduction."
"The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better."
"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex."
"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 solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release."
"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."
"The product is good, but it needs implementation and on-going support. The whole cloud engagement model has made the adoption of Kafka better due to PaaS (Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service by AWS)."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow could improve the user interface. We can drag and drop in the application for the configuration and settings, and deploy it right from the UI, without having to run a CI/CD pipeline. However, that does not work with Kubernetes, it only works when we are working with jars as the Spring Cloud Data Flow applications."
"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."
"There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or refreshing the dashboard."
"The solution's community support could be improved."
 

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."
"We use the free version."
"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"The solution provides value for money, and we are currently using its community edition."
"If you want support from Spring Cloud Data Flow there is a fee. The Spring Framework is open-source and this is a free solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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 Spring Cloud Data Flow?
There were instances of deployment pipelines getting stuck, and the dashboard not always accurately showing the application status, requiring manual intervention such as rerunning applications or r...
What is your primary use case for Spring Cloud Data Flow?
We had a project for content management, which involved multiple applications each handling content ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and storage for different customers independently. We want...
What advice do you have for others considering Spring Cloud Data Flow?
I would definitely recommend Spring Cloud Data Flow. It requires minimal additional effort or time to understand how it works, and even non-specialists can use it effectively with its friendly docu...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
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