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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
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spring Cloud Data Flow
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka is 3.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spring Cloud Data Flow is 4.7%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
NitinGoyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a plug-and-play model and provides good robustness and scalability
The solution's community support could be improved. I don't know why the Spring Cloud Data Flow community is not very strong. Community support is very limited whenever you face any problem or are stuck somewhere. I'm not sure whether it has improved in the last six months because this pipeline was set up almost two years ago. I struggled with that a lot. For example, there was limited support whenever I got an exception and sought help from Stack Overflow or different forums. Interacting with Kubernetes needs a few certificates. You need to define all the certificates within your application. With the help of those certificates, your Java application or Spring Cloud Data Flow can interact with Kubernetes. I faced a lot of hurdles while placing those certificates. Despite following the official documentation to define all the replicas, readiness, and liveliness probes within the Spring Cloud Data Flow application, it was not working. So, I had to troubleshoot while digging in and debugging the internals of Spring Cloud Data Flow at that time. It was just a configuration mismatch, and I was doing nothing weird. There was a small spelling difference between how Spring Cloud Data Flow was expecting it and how I passed it. I was just following the official documentation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good horizontal scaling and design."
"It's very easy to keep to install and it's pretty stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it can handle high volume."
"We appreciate the ability to persistently and quickly write data, as well as the flexibility to customize it for multiple customers. Additionally, we like the ability to retain data within Apache Kafka and use features, such as time travel to access past customer data. The connection with other systems, such as Apache Kafka and IBM DB2."
"Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming."
"Apache Kafka is very fast and stable."
"Kafka makes data streaming asynchronous and decouples the reliance of events on consumers."
"The ability to partition data on Kafka is valuable."
"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 product is very user-friendly."
"The dashboards in Spring Cloud Dataflow are quite valuable."
"The most valuable feature is real-time streaming."
"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 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 best thing I like about Spring Cloud Data Flow is its plug-and-play model."
 

Cons

"Kafka requires non-trivial expertise with DevOps to deploy in production at scale. The organization needs to understand ZooKeeper and Kafka and should consider using additional tools, such as MirrorMaker, so that the organization can survive an availability zone or a region going down."
"Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring."
"An area for improvement would be growth."
"Observability could be improved."
"We haven't seen a return on investment with Apache Kafka. It's used for a specific use case rather than cost reduction."
"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"It's not possible to substitute IBM MQ with Apache Kafka because the JMS part is not very stable."
"Maintaining and configuring Apache Kafka can be challenging, especially when you want to fine-tune its behavior."
"Some of the features, like the monitoring tools, are not very mature and are still evolving."
"The solution's community support could be improved."
"I would improve the dashboard features as they are not very user-friendly."
"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 configurations could be better. Some configurations are a little bit time-consuming in terms of trying to understand using the Spring Cloud documentation."
"Spring Cloud Data Flow is not an easy-to-use tool, so improvements are required."
"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."
"On the tool's online discussion forums, you may get stuck with an issue, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite affordable considering the value it provides."
"Apache Kafka is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"It is open source software."
"I was using the product's free version."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"This is an open-source solution and is free to use."
"This is an open-source version."
"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
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.