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Apache Kafka vs TIBCO Streaming comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

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
TIBCO Streaming
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Complex Event Processing (CEP) (1st)
 

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 TIBCO Streaming is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka4.0%
TIBCO Streaming1.2%
Other94.8%
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.
MK
Head of Data and Analytics Solutions at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Good stability and scalability with the capability to combine with Spotfire
The ability for StreamBase to combine with Spotfire is its most valuable aspect. The ability to handle data in motion and the entirety of data at the same time is very good. If you don't integrate the two together it's just a monitoring tool, but if they're combined together it becomes a powerful analytical tool. When you can combine live data from streaming data sources with standing data from the customer's primary database then you can calculate some KPIs or thresholds based on the previous information. We can do data science, machine learning methods or just clever queries. You can view all this online. If a KPI hits a redline, you can send alerts, which is the solution's most functional feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable...The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems."
"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."
"Deployment is speedy."
"Apache Kafka is a mature product and can handle a massive amount of data in real time for data consumption."
"It is the performance that is really meaningful."
"Good horizontal scaling and design."
"The most valuable feature is the messaging function and reliability."
"The valuable features are the group community and support."
"The ability for StreamBase to combine with Spotfire is its most valuable aspect. The ability to handle data in motion and the entirety of data at the same time is very good. If you don't integrate the two together it's just a monitoring tool, but if they're combined together it becomes a powerful analytical tool."
 

Cons

"More Windows support, I believe, is one area where it can improve."
"Kafka is a nightmare to administer."
"While the solution scales well and easily, you need to understand your future needs and prep for the peaks."
"Prioritization of messages in Apache Kafka could improve."
"For the original Kafka, there is room for improvement in terms of latency spikes and resource consumption. It consumes a lot of memory."
"In the data sharing space, the performance of Apache Kafka could be improved."
"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)."
"would like to see real-time event-based consumption of messages rather than the traditional way through a loop. The traditional messaging system works by listing and looping with a small wait to check to see what the messages are. A push system is where you have something that is ready to receive a message and when the message comes in and hits the partition, it goes straight to the consumer versus the consumer having to pull. I believe this consumer approach is something they are working on and may come in an upcoming release. However, that is message consumption versus message listening."
"The solution should be more user-friendly for developers. Right now, you need a strong programmer to tune the solution. It's complicated product. I'm not sure if it can be done via self-service with BI. Because I'm from BI, I want more simplicity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"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."
"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"It's a premium product, so it is not price-effective for us."
"It is open source software."
"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
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.
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Also Known As

No data available
TIBCO Streambase CEP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Blendtec, Brembo, CargoSmart, Hunt Oil, Autodata, Bank of Montreal
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.