Aiven for Apache Kafka vs EMQX
Aiven for Apache Kafka
aiven.io
EMQX
emqx.comSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for Apache Kafka | EMQX |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $35/mo | $234/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 5 |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.4 (#1) | 9.1 (#2) |
| Company | Aiven describes itself as an open-source data platform company founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Finland. | EMQ says it is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and was founded in 2017 after the EMQX project launched in 2013. |
| 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. | EMQ states that EMQX Cloud and Enterprise have SOC 2 Type 1 reports and that the company maintains TISAX AL2, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701:2019, ISO 20000-1:2018 and ISO 9001:2015 certifications or attestations. |
| Headquarters | Helsinki, Finland | Menlo Park, California, United States |
| Integrations | Kafka Connect compatibility and a REST proxy are listed, and the service connects with other managed databases and streaming services. | EMQX Enterprise provides more than 40 out-of-box integrations including Kafka, AWS RDS, MongoDB, Oracle, SAP and time-series databases. |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.6 out of 5 from 69 reviews. | 4.5 out of 5 from 8 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.3 out of 5 from 384 reviews for Aiven overall; the page lists 245 Aiven for Apache Kafka reviews. | 4.6 out of 5 from 23 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 36 ratings. | 4.5 out of 5 from 6 reviews |
| Security | Kafka connections can use mTLS and/or SASL authentication with ACL authorization, and data at rest is encrypted on disk or object storage. | Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificate authentication, access controls, and audit logs. |
| 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. | Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 certificates, JWT authentication, fine-grained ACL/RBAC authorization and audit logs. |
| Support | The plan comparison lists Basic support for Free and Developer plans and Advanced and Premium support for Professional. | The pricing page lists 8/5 support for Serverless and 24/7 premium support for Dedicated Flex. |
| What it does | Aiven for Apache Kafka is a fully managed Kafka service for event-driven applications, data pipelines and stream processing. | EMQX is a unified MQTT platform for connecting, processing and streaming real-time IoT data to cloud, AI and analytics systems. |
Plans
Aiven for Apache Kafka
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$35 a month
- Professional$180 a month
EMQX
- ServerlessFree
- Dedicated Flex$234 a month
- BYOCPriced on request
- ServerlessFree
- EnterprisePrice 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.
EMQX
EMQX is an MQTT messaging platform for connecting, moving, and processing IoT business data in real time. EMQX Enterprise combines publish/subscribe messaging with durable message queuing, while a SQL-based Rule Engine and visual Flow Designer support filtering, transforming, enriching, and routing data. The platform supports MQTT and protocols or gateways including QUIC, CoAP, STOMP, and LwM2M; its listed protocols also include MQTT-SN, OCPP, GB/T 32960, JT/T 808, and NATS. EMQX says a cluster can handle up to 100 million concurrent MQTT connections and lists more than 50 native integrations. Security features include TLS/mTLS, X.509 authentication, access controls, and audit logs. Deployment options include Docker, a Kubernetes Operator, and installation packages, with macOS and Linux packages listed. Plans include free Serverless and Dedicated Flex starting at $234 per month, with a 14-day trial listed for Dedicated Flex. Serverless has limits including 1,000 sessions, 1,000 TPS, and a 1 MB message size.