Confluent vs StreamSets comparison

The compared Confluent and IBM solutions aren't in the same category. Confluent is ranked #5 in SA , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 6.8% mindshare in the category. IBM is ranked #21 in DI , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Confluent users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Confluent

Read 25 Confluent reviews

4,606 Views
2,395 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

StreamSets

Read 21 StreamSets reviews

2,863 Views
2,090 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Confluent

StreamSets

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Confluent and StreamSets based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Streaming Analytics solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Confluent vs. StreamSets Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Confluent vs. StreamSets

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,707 peers since 2012

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

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (5th)

StreamSets

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Integration (21st)

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and StreamSets aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 6.8%, down 8.5% compared to last year.
StreamSets, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 1.2% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Confluent	6.8%
Apache Flink	11.3%
Databricks	9.5%
Other	72.4%

Streaming Analytics

Data Integration Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
StreamSets	1.2%
SSIS	3.7%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)	3.5%
Other	91.6%

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

PavanManepalli

AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo

Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing

I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.

Read full review

SrinivasanSankar

Enterprise Solutions Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Enables effective batch loading with visual interface and enterprise support

One issue I observed with StreamSets is that the memory runs out quickly when processing large volumes of data. Because of this memory issue, we have to upgrade our EC2 boxes in the Amazon AWS infrastructure. I had to switch to a new EC2 box, even though the processor was not fully utilized. It would be beneficial if StreamSets addressed any potential memory leak issues to prevent unnecessary upgrades. Additionally, it would be a great enhancement if StreamSets could produce a lineage graph to visualize how the data has passed through the system.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."

"Confluence's greatest asset is its user-friendly interface, coupled with its remarkable ability to seamlessly integrate with a vast range of other solutions."

"Some of the best features are that it's very quick to set up, very easy to have a centralized area that gives us a history of changes, and the ability to give feedback on any information placed onto the pages."

"The documentation process is fast with the tool."

"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."

"The features I find most useful in Confluent are the Multi-Region Cluster, MRC, and the Cluster Linking for replication."

"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."

"The most valuable feature that we are using is the data replication between the data centers allowing us to configure a disaster recovery or software. However, is it's not mandatory to use and because most of the features that we use are from Apache Kafka, such as end-to-end encryption. Internally, we can develop our own kind of product or service from Apache Kafka."

More Confluent pros

"The most valuable would be the GUI platform that I saw. I first saw it at a special session that StreamSets provided towards the end of the summer. I saw the way you set it up and how you have different processes going on with your data. The design experience seemed to be pretty straightforward to me in terms of how you drag and drop these nodes and connect them with arrows."

"The most valuable feature is the pipelines because they enable us to pull in and push out data from different sources and to manipulate and clean things up within them."

"The ability to have a good bifurcation rate and fewer mistakes is valuable."

"In StreamSets, everything is in one place."

"One of the things I like is the data pipelines. They have a very good design. Implementing pipelines is very straightforward. It doesn't require any technical skill."

"It is really easy to set up and the interface is easy to use."

"The best feature that I really like is the integration."

"I have used Data Collector, Transformer, and Control Hub products from StreamSets. What I really like about these products is that they're very user-friendly. People who are not from a technological or core development background find it easy to get started and build data pipelines and connect to the databases. They would be comfortable like any technical person within a couple of weeks."

More StreamSets pros

Cons

"The formatting aspect within the page can be improved and more powerful."

"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."

"I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team."

"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."

"Confluent has a good monitoring tool, but it's not customizable."

"Confluent has fallen behind in being the tool of the industry. It's taking second place to things such as Word and SharePoint and other office tools that are more dynamic and flexible than Confluent."

"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."

"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."

More Confluent cons

"They need to improve their customer care services. Sometimes it has taken more than 48 hours to resolve an issue. That should be reduced. They are aware of small or generic issues, but not the more technical or deep issues. For those, they require some time, generally 48 to 72 hours to respond. That should be improved."

"If you use JDBC Lookup, for example, it generally takes a long time to process data."

"We often faced problems, especially with SAP ERP. We struggled because many columns weren't integers or primary keys, which StreamSets couldn't handle. We had to restructure our data tables, which was painful. Also, pipeline failures were common, and data drifting wasn't addressed, which made things worse. Licensing was another issue we encountered."

"There aren't enough hands-on labs, and debugging is also an issue because it takes a lot of time. Logs are not that clear when you are debugging, and you can only select a single source for a pipeline."

"The design experience is the bane of our existence because their documentation is not the best. Even when they update their software, they don't publish the best information on how to update and change your pipeline configuration to make it conform to current best practices. We don't pay for the added support. We use the "freeware version." The user community, as well as the documentation they provide for the standard user, are difficult, at best."

"StreamSet works great for batch processing but we are looking for something that is more real-time. We need latency in numbers below milliseconds."

"In terms of the product, I don't think there is any room for improvement because it is very good. One small area of improvement that is very much needed is on the knowledge base side. Sometimes, it is not very clear how to set up a certain process or a certain node for a person who's using the platform for the first time."

"The logging mechanism could be improved. If I am working on a pipeline, then create a job out of it and it is running, it will generate constant logs. So, the logging mechanism could be simplified. Now, it is a bit difficult to understand and filter the logs. It takes some time."

More StreamSets cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."

"The solution is cheaper than other products."

"Confluent is highly priced."

"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."

"Confluent is an expensive solution."

"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."

"It comes with a high cost."

More Confluent pricing and cost advice

"It has a CPU core-based licensing, which works for us and is quite good."

"We are running the community version right now, which can be used free of charge."

"The pricing is affordable for any business."

"StreamSets is an expensive solution."

"It's not so favorable for small companies."

"We use the free version. It's great for a public, free release. Our stance is that the paid support model is too expensive to get into. They should honestly reevaluate that."

"I believe the pricing is not equitable."

"There are two editions, Professional and Enterprise, and there is a free trial. We're using the Professional edition and it is competitively priced."

More StreamSets pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Streaming Analytics solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?

They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Confluent?

See all answers

What do you like most about StreamSets?

The best thing about StreamSets is its plugins, which are very useful and work well with almost every data source. It's also easy to use, especially if you're comfortable with SQL. You can customiz...

See all answers

What needs improvement with StreamSets?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for StreamSets?

We are using StreamSets for batch loading.

See all answers

Comparisons

Palantir Foundry vs Confluent

Compared 14% of the time

Apache Flink vs Confluent

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Confluent

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Confluent

Compared 6% of the time

Aiven Platform vs Confluent

Compared 3% of the time

More Confluent Competitors

webMethods.io vs StreamSets

Compared 6% of the time

Matillion Data Productivity Cloud vs StreamSets

Compared 6% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle GoldenGate vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

SnapLogic vs StreamSets

Compared 5% of the time

More StreamSets Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Confluent

February 2026

Download Confluent product report

Buyer's Guide

StreamSets

January 2026

Download StreamSets product report

Overview

Confluent is an enterprise-ready, full-scale streaming platform that enhances Apache Kafka.

Confluent has integrated cutting-edge features that are designed to enhance these tasks:

Speed up application development and connectivity
Enable transformations through stream processing
Streamline business operations at scale
Adhere to strict architectural standards

Confluent is a more complete distribution of Kafka in that it enhances the integration possibilities of Kafka by introducing tools for managing and optimizing Kafka clusters while providing methods for making sure the streams are secure. Confluent supports publish-and-subscribe as well as the storing and processing of data within the streams. Kafka is easier to operate and build thanks to Confluent.

Confluent's software is available in three different varieties:

A free, open-source streaming platform that makes it simple to start using real-time data streams
An enterprise-grade version of the product with more administrative, ops, and monitoring tools
A premium cloud-based version.

Confluent Advantage Features

Confluent has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Multi-language
- Clients: C++, Python, Go, and .NET
- REST proxy: Can connect to Kafka from any connected network device
- Admin REST APIs: RESTful interface for performing administrator operations

Pre-built ecosystem
- Connectors: More than 100 supported connectors, including S3, Elastic, HDFS, JDBC
- MQTT proxy: Gain access to Kafka from MQTT gateways and devices
- Schema registry: Centralized database to guarantee data compatibility

Streaming database
- ksqlDB: Materialized views and real-time stream processing

GUI management
- Control panel: GUI for scalable Kafka management and monitoring
- Health+: Smart alerts and cloud-based control centers

DevOps automation that is flexible
- Confluent for Kubernetes: Complete API to deploy on Kubernetes
- Automated Ansible deployment on non-containerized environments

Dynamic performance
- Self-balancing clusters: Automated partition re-balancing across brokers in the cluster
- Tiered storage: Older Kafka data offloading to object storage with transparent access

Security that is enterprise-grade
- Role-based access control: Granular user/group access authorization
- Audit logs that are structured: Logs of user actions kept in dedicated Kafka topics
- Secret protection: Sensitive information is encrypted

Global resilience
- Linking clusters: A real-time, highly reliable, and consistent bridge across on-premises and cloud environments
- Multiple-region clusters: Single Kafka cluster with automated client failover distributed across multiple data centers
- Replicator: Asynchronous replication that is based on the Kafka Connect framework

Support
- Round the clock enterprise support from Kafka experts

Reviews from Real Users

Confluent stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its robust enterprise support and its open source option. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Ravi B., a solutions architect at a tech services company, writes of the solution, “KSQL is a valuable feature, as is the Kafka Connect framework for connecting to the various source systems where you need not write the code. We get great support from Confluent because we're using the enterprise version and whenever there's a problem, they support us with fine-tuning and finding the root cause.”

Amit S., an IT consultant, notes, “The biggest benefit is that it is open source. You have the flexibility of opting or not opting for enterprise support, even though the tool itself is open source.” He adds, “The second benefit is it's very modern and built on Java and Scala. You can extend the features very well, and it doesn't take a lot of effort to do so.”

Confluent

StreamSets is a data integration platform that enables organizations to efficiently move and process data across various systems. It offers a user-friendly interface for designing, deploying, and managing data pipelines, allowing users to easily connect to various data sources and destinations. StreamSets also provides real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities, ensuring that data is flowing smoothly and any issues are quickly addressed.

IBM

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost

Availity, BT Group, Humana, Deluxe, GSK, RingCentral, IBM, Shell, SamTrans, State of Ohio, TalentFulfilled, TechBridge

Buyer's Guide

Confluent vs. StreamSets

December 2025

Free Report: Confluent vs. StreamSets

Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. StreamSets and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Confluent vs. StreamSets report.

We monitor all Streaming Analytics reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.