--- title: Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Reviews meta_title: 'Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 23 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.0 review_count: 23 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-17' parent_category: name: Big Data url: https://www.g2.com/categories/big-data --- # Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Reviews **Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS) **Category:** [Event Stream Processing Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/event-stream-processing) **Average Rating:** 4.0/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 23 ## About Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) is an AWS streaming data service that manages Apache Kafka infrastructure and operations, making it easy for developers and DevOps managers to run Apache Kafka applications and Kafka Connect connectors on AWS, without the need to become experts in operating Apache Kafka. Amazon MSK operates, maintains, and scales Apache Kafka clusters, provides enterprise-grade security features out of the box, and has built-in AWS integrations that accelerate development of streaming data applications. To get started, you can migrate existing Apache Kafka workloads and Kafka Connect connectors into Amazon MSK, or with a few clicks, you can build new ones from scratch. There are no data transfer charges for in-cluster traffic, and no commitments or upfront payments required. You only pay for the resources that you use. ## Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **effortless management** of Kafka with Amazon MSK, enjoying seamless scaling, maintenance, and availability. (1 reviews) - Users value the **maintenance ease** of Amazon MSK, which simplifies Kafka management and integrates well with AWS. (1 reviews) - Users value the **management ease** of Amazon MSK, appreciating its automation of scaling and maintenance tasks. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **reliability** of Amazon MSK, which simplifies Kafka management and ensures smooth operations with AWS. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **seamless scalability** of Amazon MSK, which simplifies Kafka management and integrates well with AWS. (1 reviews) - Scaling (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the service **expensive** , particularly for smaller workloads or early-stage projects, affecting accessibility. (1 reviews) - Users find the **high cost** of Amazon MSK challenging for smaller workloads and early-stage projects. (1 reviews) - Users find **limited control** with Amazon MSK, especially for smaller projects, impacting flexibility compared to self-managed Kafka. (1 reviews) ## Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Reviews ### 1. Amazon MSK Powers Real-Time Streaming Pipelines with Ease **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** mani s. | data engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** As a data engineer, I use Amazon MSK to build real-time data streaming and event-driven data pipelines. It collects streaming data from different sources, and Kafka producers push that data into MSK topics in real time. From there, we build streaming ETL pipelines using Spark Streaming to transform the incoming data, and we integrate Amazon MSK with S3 for storage and downstream use. there best thing which i like MSK **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** I don’t have any major dislikes. It’s a good product, and I haven’t found any cons with it. **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka solves problems such as processing high data volumes in real time with low latency. It also supports CDC in pipelines in an efficient manner. It scales automatically when traffic increases and is able to handle data spikes on some days in an efficient way. ### 2. Takes the Pain Out of Kafka Management with Seamless AWS Integration **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amaro F. | Senior Product Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** What I like most about Amazon MSK is how it takes the pain out of managing Kafka. It handles scaling, maintenance, and availability for you, and works smoothly with the rest of AWS. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** The main downside is the cost, especially for smaller workloads or early-stage projects. It can also feel less flexible than self-managed Kafka in some scenarios. **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon MSK solved the problem of reliably processing and streaming large volumes of real-time data without the complexity of managing Kafka infrastructure. For the U2Go app, this means we handled events and integrations at scale with high availability and low latency, while relying on AWS to manage scaling, maintenance, and security. ### 3. Unlocking Seamless Data Streaming: Comprehensive Review of Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhijith B. | DevOps Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 15, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Amazon MSK has streamlined our Kafka operations with its seamless management, scalability, and tight integration with the AWS ecosystem. Have high security measures. While there's a learning curve, the comprehensive documentation mitigates it. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** While Amazon MSK offers significant advantages, some time we face a learning curve, potential cost considerations, service limitations, integration complexities, occasional performance issues, and limited availability in certain regions as drawbacks. **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon MSK solves challenges related to Apache Kafka management, scalability, integration with AWS, security, and high availability. The benefits are it having simplified infrastructure management, seamless scalability, enhanced integration, robust security features, and improved reliability. And ultimately allowing users to focus more on applications and data processing. ### 4. reliable, scalable, and hassle-free Kafka service is the best **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Domenico V. | Project manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** That is reliable and hassle free for all the users **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Pricing and training that does not come with the sofware **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Setting up and configuring an Apache Kafka cluster can be complex and time-consuming.Amazon MSK offers a simplified and automated deployment process, reducing the time and effort required to get a Kafka cluster up and running. ### 5. Best data streeming tool to run application with AWS flavour **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** It gave peace of mind and ease of use and implementation in upstreaming the domains and clusters. Deployment procedure is excellent where minimal or no code changes are required. As we know, the customer support is excellent from amazon. We have integrated it with lamda services and the number of fetures also insain. thanks AWS for providing one stop solutions so that the frequncy of use is increasing. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** As Apache is open source, AWS should go with agresssive pricing across the availability zones. **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mainly source code deployment updates and redeployment fixes. ### 6. MSK - Eliminate operational overhead **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Raj K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Many things. It eliminates operation overhead, no code change required to do this and it scales cluster capacity automatically. Also, easy to deploy secure, complaint and production ready application using native AWS integration with low cost. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** As of now haven't found anything so would like to skip this section **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Stream analytics ### 7. Streaming Kafka with AWS reliability and security **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** AWS MSK takes away all the worries for managing and scaling Kafka Clusters and makes it effortless to build the platform on the go. Being part of AWS suite makes support and deployment hassle free and easy to monitor in case of downtime. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** As it is easy to scale it up and down, the cost can go out of hands if not monitored and handled correctly **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon MSK has helped us in building realtime dashboards and alert monitoring systems for internal and external use across the organization ### 8. It is a very convenient solution. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Investment Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Functionality, professional service, a wide selection of features, and ease of integration. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Basically nothing, everything is working correctly **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** The Kafka platform offers a message broker function that works similarly to a message queue. ### 9. Kafka is very fast and secure messaging que rather than others **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** MUHAMMAD W. | Senior Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** It's easy to manageable producers and consumers, we can handle every topic with a lot of producers, and it's a very fast broker. **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** Nothing yet but some little bit dead log conditions managing is very tough as compared to others. **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** The microservices concept efficiently manages multiple services. ### 10. Best Managed service for data streaming **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** optimized, distributed data storage for effective processing and ingestion of streaming data **What do you dislike about Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK)?** nothing to dislike but it requires some learning compared to radis **What problems is Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) solving and how is that benefiting you?** Streaming service for java based application ## Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Discussions - [How does AWS MSK work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-does-aws-msk-work) - [Does AWS MSK support Kafka streams?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/does-aws-msk-support-kafka-streams) - [What is managed streaming for Apache Kafka?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-managed-streaming-for-apache-kafka) - [What are the broader platform for Apache Kafka?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/35218-what-are-the-broader-platform-for-apache-kafka) - 1 upvote - [What is the best product software you can offer to us or other service to improve our customer service? Is there any additional tips or advice you can offer to us? What are the best system?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/31377-what-is-the-best-product-software-you-can-offer-to-us-or-other-service-to-improve-our-customer-service-is-there-any-additional-tips-or-advice-you-can-offer-to-us-what-are-the-best-system) - 1 upvote - [View Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-managed-streaming-for-apache-kafka-amazon-msk/reviews/amazon-managed-streaming-for-apache-kafka-amazon-msk-review-4975612?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-18+15%3A02%3A46+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=009ac1ea-3cea-4b2d-b2cd-22e8d3cef37b&secure%5Btoken%5D=42779461574600672c4dc46b9fe3962887d6b214885520ccbb2a51c478b0d0de&format=llm_user) ## Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Features **Data** - Data Processing - Data Sources - Integration - Real-Time Processing **Analytics** - Reporting & Analytics **Building Reports** - Data Transformation - Data Modeling - WYSIWYG Report Design - Integration APIs **Platform** - Mobile User Support - Customization - User, Role, and Access Management - Internationalization - Sandbox / Test Environments - Performance and Reliability - Breadth of Partner Applications ## Top Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) Alternatives - [Confluent](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (111 reviews) - [Aiven for Apache Kafka](https://www.g2.com/products/aiven-for-apache-kafka/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (243 reviews) - [Tealium Customer Data Hub](https://www.g2.com/products/tealium-customer-data-hub/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (445 reviews)