Aiven for Apache Kafka vs Apache Pulsar
Aiven for Apache Kafka
aiven.io
Apache Pulsar
pulsar.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for Apache Kafka | Apache Pulsar |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $35/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.4 (#1) | 8.1 (#12) |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 9.4 (#1) | 8.1 (#7) |
| Integrations | Kafka Connect compatibility and a REST proxy are listed, and the service connects with other managed databases and streaming services. | Built-in connectors import and export data for systems including Kafka, RabbitMQ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. |
| Security controls | Aiven states that services use dedicated virtual machines, encryption in transit and at rest, firewalls, IP allowlists, SAML SSO, automated security updates and annual external testing. | Pulsar provides encryption, pluggable authentication, and authorization controls, but these are not enabled by default. |
| What it does | Aiven for Apache Kafka is a fully managed Kafka service for event-driven applications, data pipelines and stream processing. | Apache Pulsar is an open-source, distributed messaging and streaming platform built for the cloud. |
Plans
Aiven for Apache Kafka
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$35 a month
- Professional$180 a month
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.
Apache Pulsar
Apache Pulsar is a free, open-source distributed messaging and streaming platform built for cloud use. It supports message consumption with less than 10 ms latency and up to one million unique topics in a cluster. Configurable replication across geographic regions and automatic client failover to healthy clusters support multi-region deployments. Tenants and policies control access to data and actions, and can isolate brokers to limit noisy-neighbor effects. Maintained client libraries are available for Java, Go, Python, C++, Node.js, and C#. Built-in connectors move data to and from systems including Kafka, RabbitMQ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. Pulsar Functions process messages with user-defined logic in Java, Python, or Go. Tiered storage can offload data from BookKeeper to blob storage such as S3 for unlimited retention. It can run in Docker or Kubernetes, with a Helm chart for Kubernetes. Encryption, authentication, and authorization are available but are not enabled by default. The 5.0.0-M2 milestone is for early testing and feedback, not production use.