Aiven for Apache Kafka vs Amazon SQS
Aiven for Apache Kafka
aiven.io
Amazon SQS
aws.amazon.comSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for Apache Kafka | Amazon SQS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $35/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 5 |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.4 (#1) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Compliance | Aiven states compliance with ISO 27000-series standards, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI DSS, and provides an ISAE 3000/SOC 2 Type II report. | AWS says its compliance program supports 143 security standards and certifications, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-3 and NIST 800-171. |
| Integrations | Kafka Connect compatibility and a REST proxy are listed, and the service connects with other managed databases and streaming services. | AWS lists integrations with Redshift, DynamoDB, RDS, EC2, ECS, Lambda, and S3, and describes fanout with SNS. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.3 out of 5 from 384 reviews for Aiven overall; the page lists 245 Aiven for Apache Kafka reviews. | 4.3 out of 5 from 143 reviews. |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 36 ratings. | 4.6 out of 5 from 5,320 ratings. |
| Security | Kafka connections can use mTLS and/or SASL authentication with ACL authorization, and data at rest is encrypted on disk or object storage. | Server-side encryption uses AWS KMS keys to encrypt messages when SQS receives them and decrypt them for authorized consumers. |
| What it does | Aiven for Apache Kafka is a fully managed Kafka service for event-driven applications, data pipelines and stream processing. | Amazon SQS is a fully managed queue service for moving messages between distributed application components, microservices and serverless workloads. |
Plans
Aiven for Apache Kafka
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$35 a month
- Professional$180 a month
Amazon SQS
- Free TierFree
- Standard queuesPriced on request
- FIFO queuesPriced on request
- Amazon SQS Free TierFree
- Pay-as-you-goPrice not published
In their own words
Aiven for Apache Kafka
Aiven for Apache Kafka is a managed Kafka service that handles provisioning, patching, backups, security, and high availability. It runs on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, OVH, and UpCloud, with cloud availability varying by plan. Tiered storage and diskless topics can keep topic data in cloud object storage so storage and compute scale independently. A managed Schema Registry powered by the open-source Karapace project is included, alongside predictive consumer-lag monitoring, Kafka Connect compatibility, and a REST proxy. Aiven describes clusters with automatic node recovery and multi-node deployment across availability zones, and lists a 99.99% uptime SLA for Professional. Connections can use mTLS and/or SASL authentication with ACL authorization; stored data is encrypted. The Free plan costs nothing and is capped at 250 KiB/s throughput, three days of retention, and five topics with two partitions each. Developer costs $35 a month, while Professional costs $180 a month. A free 30-day trial is listed for more memory or advanced features.
Amazon SQS
Amazon SQS is a cloud message queuing service for microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. It lets separate software components send, store, and receive messages, supporting decoupled and event-driven designs. Standard queues provide at-least-once delivery with best-effort ordering, while FIFO queues preserve order without introducing duplicates. Standard queues support nearly unlimited transactions per second for each API action; FIFO high-throughput mode supports up to 70,000 messages per second without batching. Messages can contain up to 256 KB, or larger payloads can use the Java Extended Client Library with Amazon S3. SQS accepts batches of up to 10 messages and retains messages for up to 14 days. Dead Letter Queues handle messages exceeding a configured receive count and must match the source queue type. Integrations include Redshift, DynamoDB, RDS, EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, and SNS fanout. Server-side encryption uses AWS KMS keys. The Free Tier is free for 1 million requests; separate S3, KMS, and data-transfer charges may apply.