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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
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Confluent
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
7th
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 August 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Aiven Platform is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Confluent is 6.4%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.4%
Aiven Platform2.3%
Other91.3%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Abdulmunafz Mct - PeerSpot reviewer
Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science
Managed cloud databases have reduced operational effort and now support faster feature delivery
Aiven Platform could be improved by offering more detailed monitoring and analytics, additional customization plan options, enhanced cost operation insights, and more comprehensive data for advanced use cases. On a day-to-day basis, I highlight the need for improving dashboard navigation by providing clear cost visibility. There are navigational complexities that exist. If you can provide clear cost visibility, it will help reduce friction and improve the user experience. Regarding Aiven Platform's AI capabilities, I think it could improve by providing more granular role-based access control, enhancing audit logging, clearer compliance reporting, and more centralized policy management for governance and security.
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."
"The performance of Aiven Platform is quite good, as I have not seen any downtime, and it is very reliable, with backups in place, allowing me to fetch data without experiencing any high latency, even as a free tier user."
"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."
"Based on my experience with Aiven Platform, the best feature it offers is Apache Kafka, which is top-notch and one of the best services I have used."
"Aiven Platform's cloud flexibility helps my team substantially through seamless migration from one cloud to another, and it provides 99.99% uptime."
"Aiven Platform delivers highly accurate and reliable outputs with consistent performance, and its managed services, monitoring, and high availability features help to ensure data integrity and minimize downtime, highlighting the accuracy and reliability of the output."
"Overall, it's a great company and they have excellent software."
"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."
"The most valuable feature of Confluent is the wide range of features provided. They're leading the market in this category."
"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 tools."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"The biggest benefit of Confluent as a tool is that it is a distributed platform that provides more durability and stability."
"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."
"Confluent facilitates the messaging tasks with Kafka, streamlining our processes effectively."
 

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."
"Regarding needed improvements, I find the support and documentation a bit lacking in detail, and sometimes it takes long to get replies when I need support, which can be a challenge."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"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."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"From the control center perspective, there is a lot of room for improvement in the visualization."
"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."
"The solution could have an extra plugin or upgrading feature. In addition, it could have more integration with different platforms and be more compatible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It comes with a high cost."
"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."
"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 has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aiven for Apache Kafka?
To improve Aiven Platform, I suggest increasing the number of users for most starting developers, providing more free credits for the initial test phase, and increasing the size of clusters for low...
What is your primary use case for Aiven for Apache Kafka?
My main use case for Aiven Platform is Apache Kafka for event streaming. A specific example of how I use Apache Kafka for event streaming with Aiven Platform is in a project called Dr. Q, which has...
What advice do you have for others considering Aiven for Apache Kafka?
For others looking into using Aiven Platform, I would say it is a good choice because the setup is easier, the pricing is a bit lower, and although the documentation is not very detailed, it is und...
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...
 

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: June 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.