Amazon MSK vs Apache Pulsar comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Pulsar are both solutions in the Streaming Analytics category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.4, while Pulsar is ranked #19. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 7.9% mindshare in SA, compared to Pulsar’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pulsar users who would recommend it.

Amazon MSK

Read 11 Amazon MSK reviews

4,523 Views
3,459 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Apache Pulsar

Read 1 Apache Pulsar review

1,113 Views
718 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon MSK

Apache Pulsar

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon MSK and Apache Pulsar based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Streaming Analytics.

To learn more, read our detailed Streaming Analytics Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

February 2025

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Helped 842,296 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

Amazon MSK

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

6th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Apache Pulsar

Ranking in Streaming Analytics

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Amazon MSK is 7.9%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Pulsar is 2.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

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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Christian Bonami

Solution Architect at Vlaanderen connect.

The solution can mimic other APIs without changing a line of code

The solution operates as a classic message broker but also as a streaming platform. It operates differently than a traditional streaming platform with storage and computing handled separately. It scales easier and better than Kafka which can be stubborn. You can even make it act like Kafka because it understands Kafka APIs. There are even companies that will sell you Kafka but underneath it is Apache Pulsar. The solution is very compatible because it can mimic other APIs without changing a line of code.

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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 MSK's scalability is very good."

"It offers good stability."

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

"It is a stable product."

"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"

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

"The scalability and usability are quite remarkable."

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

More Amazon MSK pros

"The solution operates as a classic message broker but also as a streaming platform."

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"It would be really helpful if Amazon MSK could provide a single installation that covers all the servers."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Amazon MSK cons

"Documentation is poor because much of it is in Chinese with no English translation."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

21%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 ...

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Comparisons

Azure Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 33% of the time

Confluent vs Amazon MSK

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Amazon MSK

Compared 13% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Amazon MSK

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Stream Analytics vs Amazon MSK

Compared 3% of the time

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Apache Flink vs Apache Pulsar

Compared 33% of the time

Apache Spark Streaming vs Apache Pulsar

Compared 26% of the time

Redpanda vs Apache Pulsar

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Kinesis vs Apache Pulsar

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Apache Pulsar

Compared 7% of the time

More Apache Pulsar Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MSK

March 2025

Download Amazon MSK product report

Buyer's Guide

Streaming Analytics

February 2025

Download Apache Pulsar product report

Also Known As

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka

No data available

Overview

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)

Apache Pulsar is a cloud-native, distributed messaging and streaming platform originally created at Yahoo! and now a top-level Apache Software Foundation project

Pulsar

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Streaming Analytics. Updated: February 2025.

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