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AWS Glue vs Confluent comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

AWS Glue
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (1st)
Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Saurabh Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless integration and data preparation with robust transformation capabilities
AWS Glue's most valuable features include its transformation capabilities, which provide data quality and shape for processing in ML or AI models. It offers transformation options on canvas or through ETL pipelines, notebooks, and code. Additionally, it supports data preparation, cleaning, and filtering seamlessly. AWS Glue also enhances job scheduling and orchestration capabilities, integrating with AWS Glue Studio for comprehensive data workflow management.
Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If I'm working with big data, common languages like Python work quite nicely, which is advantageous."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is that it provides a GUI format with a drag-and-drop feature."
"The best thing about AWS Glue is its scalability and how easy it is to process a large amount of data."
"The solution's technical support is good. Whenever we raise a use case where we face an issue in our company, we get a response from the solution's technical team."
"AWS Glue is a good solution for developers, they have the ability to write code in different languages and other software."
"AWS Glue's most valuable features are the data catalog, including crawlers and tables, and Glue Studio, which means you don't have to use custom code."
"One of the best features of the solution is its ability to easily integrate with other AWS services."
"Transformations are valuable because you can modify or override complex data logic from an open source or Spark to solve issues."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"The most valuable is its capability to enhance the documentation process, particularly when creating software documentation."
"Their tech support is amazing; they are very good, both on and off-site."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"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."
"It is also good for knowledge base management."
"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

"Overall, I consider the technical support to be fine, although the response time could be faster in certain cases."
"Improvements in the UI are needed, as it is challenging to understand some functionalities."
"There should be more connectors for different databases."
"The interface for AWS Glue could improve, they do not put a lot of details. You can write the code, in PySpark or in Scala, which is a big advantage, it is only easy to use for a developer. It will be difficult for new users to enter the cloud environment."
"The point for improvement in AWS Glue would be the dynamic allocation of resources while utilizing Lambda functions."
"I would like to see a more robust interface on the no-code side. This would be nice to be able to split cells."
"I would like to see stable libraries at the moment they are not there."
"I haven't looked into Glue in terms of seeking out flaws. I've not come across missing features."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"In Confluent, there could be a few more VPN options."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"there is room for improvement in the visualization."
"The Schema Registry service could be improved. I would like a bigger knowledge base of other use cases and more technical forums. It would be good to have more flexible monitoring features added to the next release as well."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the solution a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very expensive. Specifically, I rate its pricing a six out of ten."
"This solution is affordable and there is an option to pay for the solution based on your usage."
"Technical support is a paid service, and which subscription you have is dependent on that. You must pay one of them, and it ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 per year."
"The current cost is around forty to fifty thousand a month."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"AWS Glue is a paid service that doesn't come under the free trial of AWS."
"It is not expensive. AWS Glue works on the serverless architecture. We get charged for the time the server is up. For our use case, we have to use it once in a day, and it is not expensive for us."
"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
What do you like most about Confluent?
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 to...
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 am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Glue vs. Confluent and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.