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Aiven Platform vs Confluent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Confluent is 6.5%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.5%
Aiven Platform2.3%
Other91.2%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

NM
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.
PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"Confluent is an amazing tool that is highly configurable, integrates very well with Jira, and lets you create nice documentation for various products while also supporting reporting and online content hosting."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"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."
"The design of the product is extremely well built and it is highly configurable."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"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."
"The beginner who doesn't know how to work on HTML will struggle as when you create spaces in the Confluent, if you want to have some meeting notes or anything else, you need to know HTML and which HTML tags to include."
"The solution could have an extra plugin or upgrading feature. In addition, it could have more integration with different platforms and be more compatible."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"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."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"there is room for improvement in the visualization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"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."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
12%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

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...
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.
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. ...
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 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 ...
What is your primary use case for Confluent?
The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about Aiven Platform vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.