Aiven Platform vs Amazon MSK comparison

Aiven and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Aiven is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.5, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.2. Aiven holds a 2.1% mindshare in SA, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Aiven users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Aiven Platform

Read 2 Aiven Platform reviews

873 Views
821 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Read 14 Amazon MSK reviews

2,255 Views
2,210 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Aiven Platform

Amazon MSK

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Aiven Platform and Amazon MSK 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 Aiven Platform vs. Amazon MSK Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aiven Platform vs. Amazon MSK

December 2025

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Helped 879,853 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

Aiven Platform

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

17th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon MSK is 5.1%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon MSK	5.1%
Aiven Platform	2.1%
Other	92.8%

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

njadm

CTO and Co-Founder at PeerSpot

Seamlessly handle database upgrades and minimize downtime disruptions

One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades. It also provides reliable backups. The ability to minimize disruption during upgrades is very important since any database downtime would mean system-wide disruptions.

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SYED SHAAZ

Co-Founder & CTO at Photios AI

Improved data streaming and integration challenges prompt search for alternatives

The integration capabilities of Amazon MSK are not very flexible. If you have your own self-managed Kafka, that helps significantly because you can set up configurations. We are considering self-managed Kafka since our product is only one year old. The Kafka integrations are fine, but the configurations are an issue. The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case. The product could improve by allowing us to set different configurations. I would also like to see Amazon MSK improve in the area of connectors. We are considering Confluent Cloud because they have many more connectors. They have KSQL DB and governance features. It is slightly costlier, but Confluent offers more flexibility with their connectors.

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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

"What I like best about the tool is that the process for the services is faster compared to other methods. It's easier to use because Aiven for Apache Kafka handles the maintenance, so we have less to manage. We only use Kafka to manage its connectivity."

"One of the most valuable features of Aiven Platform is that it handles the upgrades for us seamlessly, saving us time that would be spent on routine upgrades."

"I have Amazon MSK integrated with other AWS services such as S3 and Lambda."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon MSK is the integration."

"The solution's technical support was helpful."

"Amazon MSK's scalability is very good."

"Amazon MSK has good integration because our team has been undergoing significant changes. Coupling it with MSK within AWS is helpful. We don't have to set up additionals or monitor external environments. This"

"Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems."

"Amazon MSK has contributed positively to our real-time analytics capabilities because Fortis's dashboards have dashboard health that needs to be maintained, user logs that need to be maintained, and usage tracking."

"What I appreciate most about Amazon MSK is that it doesn't require extensive concern about the configurations; it starts checking how the brokers are functioning, and automatically, Amazon MSK tries to resolve all the problems."

More Amazon MSK pros

Cons

"I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution."

"One challenge we face is when we want to update the version, for example, from 3.6 to 3.7. It will spawn new nodes, and then there's rebalancing and syncing from other brokers. There's high CPU usage during this process, so the solution can't be used for a while, causing some downtime in our services. To tackle this challenge, we schedule maintenance updates during low-traffic periods when there's less risk and fewer users use the services."

"In my opinion, there are areas in Amazon MSK that could be improved, particularly in terms of configuration. Initially setting it up and getting it connected was quite challenging. The naming conventions for policies were updated by AWS, and some were undocumented, leading to confusion with outdated materials. It took us weeks of trial and error before discovering new methods through hidden tutorials and official documentation."

"The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings."

"We need to create connectors in Amazon MSK, but there are no default connectors in AWS for that purpose."

"The only issue with Amazon MSK that we are facing is the configurations. There are preset configurations and limited configurations that we can set for our unique use case."

"It should be more flexible, integration-wise."

"One of the reasons why we prefer Kafka is because the support is a little bit difficult to manage with Amazon MSK."

"The product's schema support needs enhancement. It will help enhance integration with many kinds of languages of programming languages, especially for environments using languages like .NET."

"The cost of using Amazon MSK is high, which is a significant disadvantage, as the increase in cloud costs by 50% to 60% does not justify the savings."

More Amazon MSK cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The price of Amazon MSK is less than some competitor solutions, such as Confluence."

"The platform has better pricing than one of its competitors."

"When you create a complete enterprise-driven architecture that is deployable on an enterprise scale, I would say that the prices of Amazon MSK and Confluent Platform become comparable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Hospitality Company

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aiven for Apache Kafka?

I would really like to see Aiven Platform add a user interface for database backups, as this would eliminate the need for a third-party solution. Additionally, the customer service could be more re...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Aiven for Apache Kafka?

Our primary use case is having our PostgreSQL and MySQL databases hosted by Aiven Platform. They serve as our production databases.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Aiven for Apache Kafka?

In our experience, we encountered issues with Aiven Platform's connection to Redis. It was not smooth, and though we like the solution overall, we are hesitant about using Redis integration again. ...

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What do you like most about Amazon MSK?

Amazon MSK has significantly improved our organization by building seamless integration between systems.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon MSK?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?

We are recently working with Amazon MSK at Fortis, where we have multiple dashboards in our revenue intelligence platform. We are streaming data from different apps into those dashboards. The data ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 25% of the time

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Compared 21% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Aiven Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Gigaspaces Smart Cache vs Aiven Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Instaclustr vs Aiven Platform

Compared 8% of the time

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Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 24% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 14% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 9% of the time

Apache Pulsar vs Amazon MSK

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

December 2025

Download Aiven Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

January 2026

Download Amazon MSK product report

Also Known As

No data available

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

Overview

Aiven for Apache Kafka is a robust data streaming platform utilized for real-time analytics, event-driven architectures, and message brokering, enhancing data processing across systems. It features scalable operations, excellent data replication, and comprehensive monitoring, significantly improving organizational efficiency and decision-making processes through high-level data management capabilities.

Aiven

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is a fully managed service that enables you to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka to process streaming data. Amazon MSK provides the control-plane operations, such as those for creating, updating, and deleting clusters.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Buyer's Guide

Aiven Platform vs. Amazon MSK

December 2025

Free Report: Aiven Platform vs. Amazon MSK

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