Apache Pulsar vs PubSub+ Platform comparison

Pulsar and Solace are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Pulsar is ranked #21, while Solace is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.3. Pulsar holds a 2.7% mindshare in SA, compared to Solace’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Pulsar users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Solace users who would recommend it.

Apache Pulsar

Read 1 Apache Pulsar review

766 Views
766 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

PubSub+ Platform

Read 18 PubSub+ Platform reviews

2,468 Views
1,086 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Apache Pulsar

PubSub+ Platform

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apache Pulsar and PubSub+ Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache and others in Streaming Analytics.

To learn more, read our detailed Streaming Analytics Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

January 2026

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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 Pulsar

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PubSub+ Platform

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

15th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (8th), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (2nd), Event Monitoring (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Pulsar is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubSub+ Platform is 3.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PubSub+ Platform	3.2%
Apache Pulsar	2.7%
Other	94.1%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

it_user1087029

Solution Architect at Vlaanderen connect.

The solution can mimic other APIs without changing a line of code

The solution operates as a classic message broker but also as a streaming platform. It operates differently than a traditional streaming platform with storage and computing handled separately. It scales easier and better than Kafka which can be stubborn. You can even make it act like Kafka because it understands Kafka APIs. There are even companies that will sell you Kafka but underneath it is Apache Pulsar. The solution is very compatible because it can mimic other APIs without changing a line of code.

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reviewer2714190

freelancer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers a seamless way to decouple applications, providing impressive performance and flexibility

Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka. That's the only concern I can mention; otherwise, it was as impressive as Kafka, better than Kafka based on my experience working on the Solace and Kafka white paper.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution operates as a classic message broker but also as a streaming platform."

"The topic hierarchy is pretty flexible. Once you have the subject defined just about anybody who knows Java can come onboard. The APIs are all there."

"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages."

"The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."

"The best features of PubSub+ Platform include being highly scalable, allowing us to handle billions and billions of events, and configuring and managing PubSub+ Platform is straightforward and simple while being highly reliable."

"Some valuable features include reconnecting topics, placing queues, and direct connections to MongoDB. The platform provides a dashboard to monitor the status of messages, such as how many have been processed or delivered, which is helpful for tracking performance."

"When it comes to granularity, you can literally do anything regarding how the filtering works."

"We like the seamless flexibility in protocol exchange offering without writing a code."

"The most useful features has been the WAN optimization and probably the HybridEdge, which requires some third-party adapters or plugins. The idea that we can position Solace as a protocol-agnostic message transport fabric is key to our company having all manners of asynchronous messaging protocols from MQ, Kafka, JMS, etc. I really like the WAN optimization: Send once over a WAN, then distribute locally as many times as there are subscribers."

More PubSub+ Platform pros

Cons

"Documentation is poor because much of it is in Chinese with no English translation."

"The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively."

"The section on observability pertains to understanding the functioning of an event crash. Instead of focusing on how the crash occurs, attention is given to the observable aspects, such as a memory pipeline where one person pushes messages and another reads them. However, this pipeline often encounters issues, such as the reader being unavailable, causing the system to become stuck and preventing the messages from moving forward. This can lead to the pipeline being permanently stalled."

"We've pointed out some things with the DMR piece, the event mesh, in edge cases where we could see a problem. Something like 99 percent of users wouldn't ever see this problem, but it has to do with if you get multiple bad clients sending data over a WAN, for example. That could then impact other clients."

"For improvements, I would suggest increasing the max payload size to a limit of 100MB or more. The current max payload size is limited to 5MB."

"A challenge we currently have is Solace's ability to integrate with single sign-on in our Active Directory and other single sign-on tools and platforms that any company would have. It's important for the platforms to work. Typically, they support only LDAP-based connectivity to our SQL Servers."

"The ease of management could be approved. The GUI is very good, but to configure and manage these devices programmatically in the software version is not easy. For example, if I would like to spin up a new software broker, then I could in theory use the API, but it would require a considerable amount of development effort to do so. There should be a tool, or something that Solace supports, that we could use for this, e.g., a platform like Terraform where we could use infrastructure as code to configure our source appliances."

"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."

"The product should allow third-party agents to be installed. Currently, it is quite proprietary."

More PubSub+ Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Having a free version is critical for our technology operations use case. This is primarily because our technology operations team is a cost center in our company. They are not profit drivers and having a free version for installation will probably meet our needs. Even for production, it'll support up to a 100,000 messages per second. I don't think in technology operations that we have that many events and alerts from our detection tools. Even if I have 20 or 30 event detection products out there, they're only going to publish the things which are critical or warnings. I don't think we'll ever reach a 100,000 messages per second."

"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."

"It could be cheaper. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."

"I would rate the product's pricing a ten out of ten."

"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."

"The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."

"There are different tiers where you can choose what would work for you. As a customer, you need to know roughly how many messages a month you will use."

More PubSub+ Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

26%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Retailer

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I do not know about the pricing of PubSub+ Platform because I did not manage the instance.

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What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?

Additional in-line information about certain things on PubSub+ Platform could be more beneficial for new users who are just starting to use this technology. The analytics tools integrated within Pu...

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What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?

I describe the main use cases for PubSub+ Platform as wanting to use it as a messaging queue pipeline for managing the data stream events in our IoT platform while I was working at an IoT-based com...

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

PubSub+ Platform

January 2026

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Also Known As

No data available

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal

Overview

Apache Pulsar is a cloud-native, distributed messaging and streaming platform originally created at Yahoo! and now a top-level Apache Software Foundation project

Pulsar

PubSub+ Platform is designed for real-time message publishing and outstanding interoperability. With features like intuitive administration and topic filtering, it offers both stability and high performance for scalable deployments across diverse scenarios.

PubSub+ Platform enhances data integration with its event mesh and seamless protocol compatibility, providing a comprehensive solution for organizations tracking shipments, generating reports, and managing transactions. Its granular topic filtering and WAN optimization ensure high utility in event-driven applications and cloud deployments. Users highlight the platform's intuitive administration and ease of management, though some seek improved integration with third-party tools and enhanced observability. Concerns include scalability for large payloads and training resource availability. Despite its interface complexity, PubSub+ remains valuable for trading and market data distribution.

What are the key features of PubSub+ Platform?

Real-time messaging: Facilitates seamless communication across platforms.
Flexible topic hierarchy: Supports dynamic topic taxonomy for efficient data management.
Event mesh: Enhances integration and interoperability with diverse protocols.
Intuitive administration: Simplifies system management and configuration.
WAN optimization: Ensures efficient connectivity for global deployment.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Messaging stability: Offers consistent performance in dynamic environments.
Scalability: Provides seamless expansion to accommodate growing data volumes.
Security: Maintains robust protection for sensitive information.
Support and configuration: Accessible, reliable support, and UI-driven setup streamline the management.

PubSub+ Platform is widely implemented for asynchronous messaging in industries like finance for trading and market data, logistics for shipment tracking, and tech operations management. It enables companies to modernize applications while ensuring data accuracy and efficiency across global systems.

Solace

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: January 2026.

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