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Confluent vs Cribl comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 1, 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

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
Cribl
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (14th), Log Management (8th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (12th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and Cribl aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 8.3%, down 10.2% compared to last year.
Cribl, on the other hand, focuses on Observability Pipeline Software, holds 45.3% mindshare, down 48.8% since last year.
Streaming Analytics
Observability Pipeline Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
Joe Cicero - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless log integration and reduces data costs with efficient compression
My favorite feature is Cribl Stream. That's probably the only Cribl product I have a lot of experience with, and Cribl Stream makes it very easy to identify where all the customer's log sources are and to quickly connect them to a destination source such as Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Azure Data Storage. Cribl Stream does two things: not only does it make it easy to connect one log source or one dataset to multiple storage locations, but it also has compression features, which greatly reduce the storage cost for that data. It strips out and compresses data so that only the absolute information remains and not any duplicates. Dual destination and compression are the two top features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The monitoring module is impressive."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"The benefit is escaping email communication. Sometimes people ignore emails or put them into spam, but with Confluence, everyone sees the same text at the same time."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"My favorite option in Cribl is the Stream product."
"The support team was very helpful and managed to get everything production-ready."
"Cribl offers other valuable features. For instance, you can replay data from an edge device, store your daily data in a stream, and replay specific event data into Splunk if a security incident occurs"
"Features such as Cribl Stream, Cribl LogStream, and Cribl Edge have been the most beneficial. The Cribl LogStream, in particular, is valuable for routing data, creating firewalls on pipelines, and putting security measures in place to ensure data reaches its destination without issues."
"Cribl offers easy plugin configurations and source collection settings, allowing us to collect logs from any source."
"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."
"When it comes to the product's installation phase, it is not tough for people who have good knowledge...The tool is worth the investment."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"It could be improved by including a feature that automatically creates a new topic and puts failed messages."
"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."
"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"Cribl should consider adding more features that are applicable to smaller firms, allowing broader access to their data migration through Cribl."
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"Cribl could improve by offering easier integrations with enterprise products, similar to what Splunk provides."
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"It comes with a high cost."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."
"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
Something that Cribl could do better is processing time. There is not enough customization to improve performance. An example would be with AWS Lambda functions, the way we were doing it before. Th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our use cases that we are exploring Cribl for right now are for data parsing and data manipulation.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. Cribl and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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