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Apache Kafka

4.5 (18)
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Open-source event stream processing and analytics platform

About Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source software designed to help businesses across transportation, IT, banking, telecom, and several other industries handle event stream processing operations. It enables IT professionals to collect data from various sources such as databases, mobile devices, sensors, and online applications in the form of streams of events.

Employees can securely store event streams for retrieval, manipulation, and processing of data according to business requirements. The application allows administrators to read and write streams of events in multiple programming languages and connect different clusters across various geographic regions. Apache Kafka lets organizations process payments and financial transactions, analyze sensor data from IoT devices, and capture and store customer interactions in a centralized repository. It also helps logistics and automotive businesses to track and monitor vehicles, trucks, fleets, and shipments in real-time.

Apache Kafka supports integration with various third-party relational databases and event sources via APIs. Other features include data import/export, analytics, data storage management, event logs, activity tracking, and more.


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Apache Kafka

4.5 (18)
VS.
Highly reviewed

Starting Price

No pricing found
US$22.00
month

Pricing Options

Free version
Free trial
Free version
Free trial

Features

16
61

Integrations

No integrations found
58

Ease of Use

3.5 (18)
4.7 (402)

Value for Money

3.8 (18)
4.9 (402)

Customer Service

3.8 (18)
4.8 (402)
Green rating bars show the winning product based on the average rating and number of reviews.

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Overall rating

4.5 /5
(18)
Value for Money
3.8/5
Features
4.3/5
Ease of Use
3.5/5
Customer Support
3.8/5

94%
recommended this app
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18 Reviews

Ava
Ava Show more details
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Reliable Data Streaming

Reviewed on 24/09/2024

Pros

It is excellent for handling large-scale real-time data streams. It’s highly reliable and perfect for managing event-driven architectures.

Cons

The setup and configuration can be quite complex, especially for beginners, and requires a solid understanding of distributed systems.

Verified Reviewer Show more details
Overall rating
  • Industry: Logistics & Supply Chain
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source Show more details

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

Good stream processing platform

Reviewed on 5/04/2022

We used Apache Kafka to move our data integration pipelines from batch to streaming. This has given...

We used Apache Kafka to move our data integration pipelines from batch to streaming. This has given us a more efficient and cost-effective solution to keep our data warehouse up-to-date in near real-time.

Pros

Apache Kafka's stream processing capabilities allowed us to move from batch jobs to streaming data pipelines which greatly improved the freshness of our data warehouse.

Cons

It's very challenging to set up, manage, and monitor if you're not using a managed SaaS solution.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Kinesis

Reasons for Switching to Apache Kafka

With the open-source Apache Kafka, we're able to self-host it in our existing servers at no additional upfront cost.
Verified Reviewer Show more details
Overall rating
  • Industry: Security & Investigations
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source Show more details

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10

Kafka, my best not queue system

Reviewed on 31/01/2022

Pros

The functionality of kafka is just so good, everything works fine and nothing breaks any time. also the distribution is really good

Cons

Really hard to deploy it, and maintain it. depends on a lot of things like zoopkeeper.

Riya
Riya Show more details
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer & Network Security
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Best for the Stream line Data Processing

Reviewed on 27/03/2023

It is designed to handle large volume of data with no data loss where real time data processing is...

It is designed to handle large volume of data with no data loss where real time data processing is allowed.It has high support and community available on the Internet.

Pros

It is an open source which can handle real time data, Due to its scalability and fault tolerance it is the best choice for the large amount of real time data processing. No message will be lost even in the case of software or hardware failure

Cons

It is a complex to setup for those who are new for the distributed network. It is dependent on the zoo keeper which is a single point failure.

Verified Reviewer Show more details
Overall rating
  • Industry: Information Technology & Services
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10

Kafka is great if it fits your use case

Reviewed on 3/05/2022

Pros

I have usually worked in teams where kafka was already set up and managed by a dedicated team.

It has been pretty easy to integrate new services into the existing topics and start consuming messages, there was no friction to populate the data needed in those new services.

Another aspect I liked about kafka is that integrating RBAC access to the topics was not hard at all.

Cons

The hardest part of using kafka, for me has been the operational overhead it produces, it is really time consuming and expensive to set up a cluster and start working with it, this makes me usually not choose it as a first option when starting a project because of these reasons and use instead something more lightweight like SNS/SQS or rabbit.

Using a managed solution like confluent or kinesis has greatly mitigated this issue although still this requires a monthly cost investment before your workload starts generating revenue.

Apache Kafka FAQs

Below are some frequently asked questions for Apache Kafka.

Apache Kafka offers the following pricing plans:

  • Free Trial: Not Available

Please contact Apache Software Foundation directly for pricing details.

Apache Kafka has the following typical customers:

Self Employed, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000

We do not have any information about what languages Apache Kafka supports

Apache Kafka supports the following devices:

We do not have any information about what integrations Apache Kafka has

Apache Kafka offers the following support options:

Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support

Related categories

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