Apache Kafka Pros and Cons: Top 5 Advantages and Disadvantages

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Generated from real user reviews

Users value the high scalability of Apache Kafka, which excels in managing growing data volumes efficiently. (3 mentions)

Users praise the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for enterprise data growth. (2 mentions)

Users value the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for growing enterprise data needs. (2 mentions)

Users praise real-time data processing in Apache Kafka for its speed, reliability, and scalability across systems. (2 mentions)

Users commend the reliability of Apache Kafka, praising its durability, fault tolerance, and scalability for data processing. (2 mentions)

Users struggle with operational complexity and high resource consumption, finding Kafka's message queuing features limited. (1 mentions)

Users feel that data management issues in Apache Kafka require extensive expertise, which can overwhelm smaller teams. (1 mentions)

Users find debugging issues in Apache Kafka challenging, requiring significant effort and effective tools for resolution. (1 mentions)

Users find the difficult learning curve of Apache Kafka overwhelming for smaller teams, requiring dedicated expertise for management. (1 mentions)

Users find limited customization challenging, especially with complex setups and manual management of brokers and zookeepers. (1 mentions)

5 Pros or Advantages of Apache Kafka

1. Scalability

Users value the high scalability of Apache Kafka, which excels in managing growing data volumes efficiently.

See 3 mentions

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Dakalo M.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5.0/5

"Unmatched Scalability and Performance for Enterprise Data Growth"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High scalability and performance making it ideal for growing data volumes in enterprises.

Priyanka R.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"Apache Kafka: Real-Time Data Streaming"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High throughput and low latency, scalability ,Durability & Fault Tolerance ,replay ability & Retention Kafka retains messages for a configu

2. Performance

Users praise the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for enterprise data growth.

See 2 mentions

See Related User Reviews

Dakalo M.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5.0/5

"Unmatched Scalability and Performance for Enterprise Data Growth"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High scalability and performance making it ideal for growing data volumes in enterprises.

Abdullah H.

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"Impressive High Performance"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High Performance and easy to use as event driven in Microservices

3. Performance Efficiency

Users value the high scalability and performance of Apache Kafka, making it perfect for growing enterprise data needs.

See 2 mentions

See Related User Reviews

Dakalo M.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5.0/5

"Unmatched Scalability and Performance for Enterprise Data Growth"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High scalability and performance making it ideal for growing data volumes in enterprises.

Abdullah H.

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"Impressive High Performance"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High Performance and easy to use as event driven in Microservices

4. Real-time Data

Users praise real-time data processing in Apache Kafka for its speed, reliability, and scalability across systems.

See 2 mentions

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Priyanka R.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"Apache Kafka: Real-Time Data Streaming"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

High throughput and low latency, scalability ,Durability & Fault Tolerance ,replay ability & Retention Kafka retains messages for a configu

Akshat J.

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"A strong and reliable tool for real-time data streaming"

What do you like about Apache Kafka?

Kafka handles large volumes of data really well and is very reliable once set up properly. We use it for real-time data processing between different p

5. Reliability

Users commend the reliability of Apache Kafka, praising its durability, fault tolerance, and scalability for data processing.

See 2 mentions

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Priyanka R.

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

4.5/5

"Apache Kafka: Real-Time Data Streaming"

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

4.4/5(894)

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Kubendra Reddy M.

Data Engineer

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

3/24/2022

"Standard tool for Data Streaming"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Best thing about kafka is its scalability, resilient, low latency. Its parallel processing make the consumers to pull millions of records within seconds. Topics can be partitioned for better parallelism. We can even check the topic data and offset to check where we currently streaming. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Nothing it is perfect for streaming applications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

Standard data streaming tool go for it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used kafka to manage millions of records that we are getting from web and mobiles sources and mongo database as consumer. Kafka made our jobs easy and standard. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Vinod G.

Sr Research Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/29/2022

"The Perfect Message Broker"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Very High Throughput and fail-safe broker Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Does not contain a complete set of monitoring tools! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

For real-time Stream Analysis and High throughput:

1)Sequential IO

2)Zero Copy

3)Compression

3)Queuing Structure Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

Streaming Analysis, as well as Message Queuing of real-time data of high volume, results in the elimination of Storage based systems thereby saving lots of costs! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Samar S.

Associate Data Scientist

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

12/31/2021

"Kafka is the best streaming framework I have ever used."

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

There are a couple of things I love about Kafka, mentioned below:

1. Easy to use & adapt.

2. Great community support.

3. Great speeds of message sharing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

There's nothing so far that I dislike about Kafka. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jasmeet singh V.

Software Developer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/25/2021

"Apache Kafka Performance Review"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Its event size is 1MB and it's very good. Generally, event services are used to send small data. The connectors are widely available like Apache Sink, MongoDB, etc. It helps the producer or consumer lifecycle to be fully automated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Apache is open source, so for beginners, it's not very friendly. Also, for the connectors, companies like Confluent are capturing the market, which is a paid option. More options should be available in terms of connectors and other related tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

We don't have any better message processing system other than Kafka. We can surely rely on it to handle data from large to small sizes. We have options like synchronous or asynchronous processing. We can create topics with parallel processing so that our data will be divided and sent faster with topic partitioning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have 5 microservices, and all are interchanging their data through Kafka itself. It's the sole message transfer software we are using for all purposes like notifications, data enrichment, and poller services like cron jobs. From small to large data sizes, it's like a one-man army. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

1/14/2022

"Apache Kafka is really a very good thing in the IT industry. It makes life easy for the developers."

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

The most liked thing about Apache Kafka is it can handle millions of records with a very high throughput with zero data loss. It has very low latency and is scalable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

In my view, it is complete software in itself. As I have been using Apache Kafka for more than 2 years of my career, I found it is a very nice thing for developers. So everyone likes it with zero haters. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

Hey guys, try to use Apache Kafka. It resolves many issues and you can easily handle all your streaming issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We resolve ETL problems using Kafka and we can easily dump our millions of records into our data lake for further processing using Kafka. It helps us resolve many issues faced with old techniques. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

5/24/2022

"A good stream-processing software"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

The event streaming process is so smooth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Sometimes we have issues with loading the tools while working with large files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nayan S.

Software Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

8/7/2021

"Most valuable Streaming platform"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka provides a mechanism to replay messages if our infrastructure loses data. This tool can be used as an application log collector. Real-time data processing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

A comprehensive set of monitoring tools is not available to the user. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

You should use Apache Kafka when you require a messaging system that can provide higher ordering guarantees. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used Apache Kafka for several reasons, and that allowed us to simplify operational monitoring and exception tracking with core microservices of the web application. Messages are retained by Kafka for a length of time after they have been consumed. Kafka allows consumers to fetch messages (pulling). Because of its architecture, it may be expanded horizontally by adding more nodes. Businesses now rely more and more on real-time data analysis to obtain faster insights and respond faster, Apache Kafka is the best choice for them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Savan S.

Senior Software Engineer

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

7/10/2021

"Beyond messaging queue"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is the best scalable, reliable, robust, and open-sourced messaging streaming tool. Multiple subscribers consume the single-time published information via the publisher-subscriber concept. Also, Apache Kafka is highly configurable. To configure any setting, we need to add the property key and value within the property file of Kafka Broker or Kafka Consumer, or Kafka Publisher, that's it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is much powerful and valuable tool. The features provided by this tool are beyond our expectations so, as far as I could not find anything to dislike specific to Apache Kafka. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

Apache Kafka is one of the excellent data streaming and messaging queue. Also, this tool is highly configurable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We required an asynchronous way of communication with our other services deployed in our microservice infrastructure, but we had to store messages after published for a short-term period. Also, the partition mechanism allowed us the parallel consumption of our messages, which has significantly increased the efficiency of our services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hitesh A.

Senior Consultant

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/29/2022

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"Kafka Integration"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

Kafka integrate with hundreds event sources Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

Data Transformation on fly, Data Retention, Topic Rebalancing Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jimesh S.

Software Engineer

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

4/13/2021

"Kafka - The data streaming broker"

5/5

What do you like best about Apache Kafka?

We used Apache Kafka as a data streaming tool which has helped us to develop loosely coupled architecture and allowed us to make asynchronized communication between multiple services. Moreover, its partitioning feature has incredibly increased the efficiency of our application. We integrated Kafka with Avro to serialize and deserialize our data and validate it as well. It was quite easy to integrate with 3rd party tool. Kafka has great documentation large user group so we easily get community support. Eventually, I can say that Apache Kafka is an easy to configure, versatile, speedy and low latency tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Apache Kafka?

It is a highly configurable and feature-rich tool hence, I could not find anything to dislike in Apache Kafka. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Apache Kafka:

Apache Kafka is not only the messaging broker but it provides a myriad of features, before choosing any other Messaging Broker please have a look at the features provided by Apache Kafka. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Apache Kafka solving and how is that benefiting you?

We had to develop loosely coupled services so, downtime of one service should not affect the others. Furthermore, we needed to interact seamlessly with any service and also considered speed and performance. Also, we had to openly available Kafka Server so, authentication/authorization was also required, but we really thankful to Kafka documentation which made our story very easy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.