No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Apache NiFi vs IBM Streams comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 NiFi
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (3rd)
IBM Streams
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Apache NiFi and IBM Streams aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Apache NiFi is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 7.8%, down 9.3% compared to last year.
IBM Streams, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 2.2% mindshare, up 1.2% since last year.
Compute Service Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache NiFi7.8%
AWS Lambda14.0%
Amazon EC213.9%
Other64.3%
Compute Service
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Streams2.2%
Databricks7.4%
Apache Flink6.7%
Other83.7%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

YV
architect with 51-200 employees
Unified data flows have simplified large-scale ingestion and have improved SLA reliability
Improvements can be made in the way of the UI. From the deployment perspective, Git configurations are available in 2.6 versions and 2.0 and later versions of Apache NiFi. Before 2.0, templates had to be created and stored in Apache NiFi Registry, which is available. However, templates still need to be imported and exported manually if moving from one environment to another environment. Even in 2.0 versions, although GitHub configurations are available, how it will function needs to be evaluated. Seamless CI/CD deployments are somewhat tricky and challenging when it comes to Apache NiFi with the proper approvals, moving that flow to another environment, and giving the proper RBAC controls. These are areas that could be improved. Documentation is adequate, but the only pain point is the deployment aspect.
Ahmed_Emad - PeerSpot reviewer
Territory Sales Leader at Sumerge
A solution for data pipelines but has connector limitations
We have used Kafka for seven years. IBM streams gives you many OOTB features that can boost the time-to-market, especially when it comes to reporting and monitoring for example. Confluent is recognized as one of the leaders in this space and the main reason for this is related to the complete vision of the platform also the large number of connectors. This gives the edge and competitive advatnage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The web based UI is phenomenal in allowing an easier usage of configurations than Apache Flume."
"NiFi works on data and file levels, streamlining real-time data processes."
"Apache NiFi has positively impacted my organization by definitely bridging the gap between the on-premises and cloud interaction until we find a solution to open the firewall for cloud components to directly interact with on-premises services."
"NiFi allows us to organize our ingestion as the directed graphs and provides a useful GUI, that can be used to configure the system and monitor data flows."
"It is highly effective for handling real-time data by working with APIs for immediate and continuous data extraction."
"We can integrate the tool with other applications easily."
"Apache NiFi is the heart of data ingestion for the entire platform and tremendously makes the platform reliable and useful for customers without crossing any SLAs."
"Apache NiFi has positively impacted our organization by making us a lot more productive; I would say development has significantly improved."
"The product has enabled us to create solutions to client problems that would have either been impossible or very expensive/difficult using other technologies."
"The OEM Solution (Excel-medical.com) running on top of IBM Streams provides real-time clinical algorithms that can give better insight into the patient's acuity, thus cutting off time to discharge patients and inversely making sure that sick patients don't get discharged until ready."
"As a result, the TELCO company was able to cut down the time it took to respond to customer needs and there were fewer complaints."
"Easy development and deployment, Java implementation features, and the real time analyser and alarm function are the most valuable features for us."
 

Cons

"The operations are over-complicated and when you build your pipeline, it's a nightmare to follow them."
"The overall stability of this solution could be improved."
"There should be a better way to integrate a development environment with local tools."
"The biggest challenges I have faced while using Apache NiFi revolve around reliability; I have seen Apache NiFi crashing at times, which is one of the issues we have faced in production."
"The use case templates could be more precise to typical business needs."
"There are issues with stability due to memory."
"The tool should incorporate more tutorials for advanced use cases. It has tutorials for simple use cases."
"The reason I rate Apache NiFi a seven is that most development folks are afraid to start using Apache NiFi because, to begin with, it does not always directly make sense."
"I’d like to see a tool kit specifically targeted at incremental machine learning. It’s already great for scoring previously trained models, but dynamically updating models is currently more of a 'grow your own' kind of thing."
"The development IDE sometimes crashes and freezes."
"The price and versatility of this product need to improve - it is not inexpensive."
"We had some stability issues where we used embedded Zookeeper in production."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source solution."
"I used the tool's free version."
"We use the free version of Apache NiFi."
"The solution is open-source."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Compute Service solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache NiFi?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was fine, as the integration with the AWS Marketplace was very good. The pricing in Italy is considered a little bit high, but the product is ...
What needs improvement with Apache NiFi?
Adding transformation capabilities is crucial. Apache NiFi is very powerful at ingestion but it needs to be powerful also at the transformation part. We don't use it for the transformation part and...
What is your primary use case for Apache NiFi?
Apache NiFi is mainly used for data ingestion only, functioning as an extraction tool to extract and load data. It is not particularly strong at the transformation part, but it excels at the ingest...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM InfoSphere Streams
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Macquarie Telecom Group, Dovestech, Slovak Telekom, Looker, Hastings Group
Globo TV, All England Lawn Tennis Club, CenterPoint Energy, Consolidated Communications Holdings, Darwin Ecosystem, Emory University Hospital, ICICI Securities, Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT), Living Roads, Mobileum, Optibus, Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP), University of Alberta, University of Montana, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Wimbledon 2015
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Zadara and others in Compute Service. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.