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Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon SQS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (4th)
Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Amazon SQS and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Amazon SQS is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 12.3%, down 19.0% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 0.2% mindshare, up 0.0% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Aravind Nithiyanandham - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for notifying, queuing servers, and queuing messages
I created a support ticket one or two years ago. The technical support team responded promptly and helped us with the issues. I am very much happy with the solution’s technical support. They are knowledgeable, understand our problem easily, and then figure out the issues. On a scale from one to ten, where one is bad and ten is excellent, I rate the solution’s technical support nine and a half out of ten.
Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
Significant cost savings with real-time processing and fast recovery
We use Kafka for a stage event-driven process from a process perspective. Our platform is an ID platform, so after registration data is received, it has to be stored from various registration locations. The process includes stages like quality checking, consistency, format, biometric data checking…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The dead-letter queue is very helpful in maintaining the messages that come into the queue."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"We use SNS as the publisher, and our procurement service subscribes to those events using SQS. In the past, we relied on time-based or batch-based processes to send data between services on-premises. With SQS, we can trigger actions based on real-time changes in business processes, improving reliability."
"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."
"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"The most valuable features of the solution are AWS Lambda services, ECS, and QuickSight reports, which are beneficial for data analysis."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is the interface."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"The use of Kafka's logging mechanism has been extremely beneficial for us, as it allows us to sequence messages, track pointers, and manage memory without having to create multiple copies."
"Kafka allows you to handle huge amounts of data and classify it into different categories. If you have huge amounts of data, Kafka is a very good solution for data classification."
"There are numerous possibilities that can be explored. While it may be challenging to fully comprehend the potential advantages, one key aspect is the ability to establish a proper sequence of events rather than simply dealing with a jumbled group of occurrences. These events possess their own timestamps, even if they were not initially provided with one, and are arranged in a chronological order that allows for a clear understanding of the progression of the events."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is its versatility. It can solve many use cases or can be a part of many use cases. Its fundamental value of it is in the real-time processing capability."
"The processing power of Apache Kafka is good when you have requirements for high throughput and a large number of consumers."
"With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the performance."
"Kafka makes data streaming asynchronous and decouples the reliance of events on consumers."
 

Cons

"Amazon SQS is costly. I think there could be improvements in how it facilitates comparisons between different AWS products. A calculator would be helpful. The calculator for Kafka is based on factors like throughput or storage used in the last month. In contrast, the calculator for Amazon SQS is based on the number of transactions processed. These different approaches make it challenging to compare them directly. I suggest AWS provide a straightforward calculator where I can input one aspect, and it calculates costs for multiple solutions."
"The search should be more user-friendly, allowing me to search for a longer period of time and return results faster."
"Support could be improved."
"For Amazon SQS, in particular, I think AWS Management Console has shortcomings. AWS Management Console should be a better pluggable option to help users with some integrations."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."
"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."
"A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue."
"Apache Kafka could improve data loss and compatibility with Spark."
"Data pulling and restart ability need improving."
"Maintaining and configuring Apache Kafka can be challenging, especially when you want to fine-tune its behavior."
"The solution could always add a few more features to enhance its usage."
"The initial setup and deployment could be less complex."
"Kafka's interface could also use some work. Some of our products are in C, and we don't have any libraries to use with C. From an interface perspective, we had a library from the readies. And we are streaming some of the products we built to readies. That is one of the requirements. It would be good to have those libraries available in a future release for our C++ clients or public libraries, so we can include them in our product and build on that."
"In Apache Kafka, it is currently difficult to create a consumer."
"The manageability should be improved. There are lots of things we need to manage and it should have a function that enables us to manage them all cohesively."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"It's quite expensive."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Apache Kafka has an open-source pricing."
"We use the free version."
"The price of Apache Kafka is good."
"I was using the product's free version."
"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."
"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"This is an open-source version."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
There is room for improvement in handling large-scale data. For significant data bursts, Kinesis is a better option than SQS. The SQS could enhance its performance in managing large volumes of data...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I am using Amazon SQS as part of my use of AWS over the past ten years. I have been leveraging it for data transitions between different systems, especially in my current project. It helps in creat...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
I would rate the overall cost of using Kafka as a three out of ten, indicating that it is rather affordable, considering the benefits and savings it provides.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SQS vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.