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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
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 4.6%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka3.7%
Spring Cloud Data Flow4.6%
Other91.7%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
Alokik Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective microservice and task management but needs more dashboard features
The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable. By injecting the dependency of Spring Cloud Dataflow into our Spring Boot application and annotating it with 'enable task annotation', we can manage tasks effectively. Additionally, the platform allows us to create pipelines and use microservices like a logical AND gate, giving us greater control over our microservices.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature for me is the guaranteed delivery of messages from producers to consumers."
"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."
"For example, when you want to send a message to inform all your clients about a new feature, you can publish that message to a single topic in Apache Kafka. This allows all clients subscribed to that topic to receive the message. On the other hand, if you need to send billing information to a specific customer, you can publish that message on a topic dedicated to that customer. This message can then be sent as an SMS to the customer, allowing them to view it on their mobile device."
"It is a stable solution...A lot of my experience indicates that Apache Kafka is scalable."
"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."
"Good horizontal scaling and design."
"Kafka is scalable. It can manage a high volume of data from many sources."
"I like Kafka's flexibility, stability, reliability, and robustness."
"The best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."
"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."
"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 dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
"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 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 product is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
 

Cons

"There are some latency problems with Kafka."
"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."
"We haven't seen a return on investment with Apache Kafka. It's used for a specific use case rather than cost reduction."
"While the solution scales well and easily, you need to understand your future needs and prep for the peaks."
"The solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release."
"As an open-source project, Kafka is still fairly young and has not yet built out the stability and features that other open-source projects have acquired over the many years. If done correctly, Kafka can also take over the stream-processing space that technologies such as Apache Storm cover."
"Confluent has improved aspects like documentation and cloud support, yet Kafka's reliance on older architectures like ZooKeeper in previous versions is a limitation."
"In the next release, I would like for there to be some authorization and HTL security."
"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."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution's community support could be improved."
"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."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"The configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"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."
"The solution is free, it is open-source."
"The solution is open source."
"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."
"Apache Kafka has an open-source pricing."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"Apache Kafka is free."
"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."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise47
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 do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
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 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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Spring Cloud Data Flow and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
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