Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK comparison

Amazon Kinesis and Amazon MSK are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Kinesis is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8, while Amazon MSK is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.4. Amazon Kinesis holds a 8.7% mindshare in SA, compared to Amazon MSK’s 7.7% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Amazon Kinesis users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Amazon MSK users who would recommend it.

Amazon Kinesis

Read 27 Amazon Kinesis reviews

5,675 Views
4,237 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Read 11 Amazon MSK reviews

4,132 Views
3,122 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Amazon Kinesis

Amazon MSK

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Amazon Kinesis and Amazon MSK are competing in the real-time data streaming and processing category. Amazon Kinesis is preferred for its broad integration and simplified setup, attracting businesses looking for a straightforward approach. However, Amazon MSK stands out for its advanced features, better serving organizations with demanding data processing needs.

Features: Amazon Kinesis provides seamless scaling, intuitive data ingestion for real-time analytics, and strong AWS service integration. Amazon MSK is a managed Apache Kafka service, ensuring high throughput and low latency for extensive stream processing, which is advantageous for advanced processing requirements.

Room for Improvement: Amazon Kinesis can improve by offering more advanced data processing options, better support for complex data scenarios, and expanding beyond AWS service dependencies. Amazon MSK could enhance user experience by simplifying its setup, reducing configuration time, and offering more intuitive management tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Kinesis offers a simplified deployment model and streamlined AWS integration, facilitating easier business implementation. Amazon MSK requires more configuration effort but provides flexibility for custom setups. Both benefit from AWS's reliable customer support, ensuring adequate assistance for users.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Kinesis is known for lower initial costs and faster ROI, appealing to businesses seeking cost-effective solutions. Amazon MSK has higher upfront expenses but promises significant long-term returns due to its robustness, presenting an investment for comprehensive streaming solutions that may yield greater returns over time.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Kinesis vs. Amazon MSK Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Amazon MSK

April 2025

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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

Amazon Kinesis

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

5th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon Kinesis is 8.7%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon MSK is 7.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

Rajni Kumar Jha

Senior Software Engineer at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Used for media streaming and live-streaming data

It is not compulsory to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use the data streaming, you can use just the Kinesis data firehose. Using the Kinesis data firehose is compulsory because we can't store all chats and recordings in Amazon S3 without it. When a call comes in the Amazon Kinesis instance, it will go to Data Streams if we use it. Otherwise, it will go to the Kinesis data firehose, where we need to define the S3 bucket path, and it will go to Amazon S3. So, without the Kinesis data firehose, we can't store all the chats and recordings in Amazon S3. Using Amazon Kinesis totally depends upon the user's requirements. If you want to use live streaming for the data lake or data analyst team, you need to use Amazon Kinesis. If you don't want to use it, you can directly use the Kinesis data firehose, which will be stored in Amazon S3. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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FNU AKSHANSH

Senior Data Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Streamlines our processes, and we don't need to configure any VPCs; it's automatic

We don't have many use cases involving ingesting large amounts of data and scaling up and down. We have a clear understanding of our data volume, which remains relatively constant throughout the week. While we're aware of other features Amazon MSK offers, we feel confident in our current setup. If our requirements change significantly in the future, we'll reassess our needs and consider adopting Amazon MSK.

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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

"Amazon Kinesis has improved our ROI."

"The management and analytics are valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is that it has a pretty robust way of capturing things."

"The product's initial setup phase is not difficult because we are using the tool on the cloud."

"Everything is hosted and simple."

"What I like about Amazon Kinesis is that it's very effective for small businesses. It's a well-managed solution with excellent reporting. Amazon Kinesis is also easy to use, and even a novice developer can work with it, versus Apache Kafka, which requires expertise."

"I like the ease of use and how we can quickly get the configurations done, making it pretty straightforward and stable."

"I have worked in companies that build tools in-house. They face scaling challenges."

More Amazon Kinesis pros

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

"The scalability and usability are quite remarkable."

"Overall, it is very cost-effective based on the workflow."

"MSK has a private network that's an out-of-box feature."

"It offers good stability."

"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's separation of concerns and ease of creating and deploying new features are highly valuable. It just requires to assign them to the topic, and then anyone who needs to consume these messages can do so directly from Amazon MSK. This separation of concerns makes it very convenient, especially for new feature development, as developers can easily access the messages they need without having to deal with complex server communications or protocol setups."

"It provides installations, scaling, and other functionalities straight out of the box."

More Amazon MSK pros

Cons

"I think the default settings are far too low."

"The price is not much cheaper. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing."

"We were charged high costs for the solution’s enhanced fan-out feature."

"Kinesis Data Analytics needs to be improved somewhat. It's SQL based data but it is not as user friendly as MySQL or Athena tools."

"There could be valid data in Kinesis that is not being processed, which affects stability. Although it rarely happens, this issue has been observed in many deployments, making it not completely stable."

"It would be beneficial if Amazon Kinesis provided document based support on the internet to be able to read the data from the Kinesis site."

"Amazon Kinesis involved a more complex setup and configuration than Azure Event Hub."

"The solution has a two-minute maximum time delay for live streaming, which could be reduced."

More Amazon Kinesis cons

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

"Horizontal scale-out is actually not easy, making it an area where improvements are required."

"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."

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

"The configuration seems a little complex and the documentation on the product is not available."

"Amazon MSK could improve on the features they offer. They are still lagging behind Confluence."

"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."

"It does not autoscale. Because if you do keep it manually when you add a note to the cluster and then you register it, then it is scalable, but the fact that you have to go and do it, I think, makes it, again, a bit of some operational overhead when managing the cluster."

More Amazon MSK cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was actually a fairly high volume we were spending. We were spending about 150 a month."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"The fee is based on the number of hours the service is running."

"In general, cloud services are very convenient to use, even if we have to pay a bit more, as we know what we are paying for and can focus on other tasks."

"I think for us, with Amazon Kinesis, if we have to set up our own Kafka or cluster, it will be very time-consuming. If one considers the aforementioned aspect, Amazon Kinesis is a cheap tool."

"Amazon Kinesis pricing is sometimes reasonable and sometimes could be better, depending on the planning, so it's a five out of ten for me."

"Amazon Kinesis is an expensive solution."

"The product falls on a bit of an expensive side."

More Amazon Kinesis pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis's main purpose is to provide near real-time data streaming at a consistent 2Mbps rate, which is really impressive.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Kinesis?

Amazon Kinesis is moderately priced. In comparison with other competitors, it is fairly priced, however, if they reduced the price a little, it could add more value to customers.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Kinesis?

I do not see any scope for improvement as it does what it is supposed to do. No changes are required. Since it's predominantly a back-end service, any end-user isn't going to interact with it direc...

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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?

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. There were no other notable issues.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MSK?

We used Amazon MSK to manage high-volume third-party data entering our system. It served as a buffer when our system was unable to consume data at high speeds in real-time. The data initially went ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Confluent vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 30% of the time

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 23% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 17% of the time

Databricks vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 6% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Amazon Kinesis

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Kinesis Competitors

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 34% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 21% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Amazon MSK

Compared 10% of the time

Apache Flink vs Amazon MSK

Compared 9% of the time

Aiven Platform vs Amazon MSK

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon MSK Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis

April 2025

Download Amazon Kinesis product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

April 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Also Known As

Amazon AWS Kinesis, AWS Kinesis, Kinesis

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

Overview

Amazon Kinesis makes it easy to collect, process, and analyze real-time, streaming data so you can get timely insights and react quickly to new information. Amazon Kinesis offers key capabilities to cost-effectively process streaming data at any scale, along with the flexibility to choose the tools that best suit the requirements of your application. With Amazon Kinesis, you can ingest real-time data such as video, audio, application logs, website clickstreams, and IoT telemetry data for machine learning, analytics, and other applications. Amazon Kinesis enables you to process and analyze data as it arrives and respond instantly instead of having to wait until all your data is collected before the processing can begin.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Zillow, Netflix, Sonos

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Kinesis vs. Amazon MSK

April 2025

Free Report: Amazon Kinesis vs. Amazon MSK

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