Aiven for Apache Kafka vs RabbitMQ
Aiven for Apache Kafka
aiven.io
RabbitMQ
rabbitmq.comSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for Apache Kafka | RabbitMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $35/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 4 |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.4 (#1) | 8.5 (#6) |
| Access control | Kafka supports both simplified Aiven ACLs and Kafka-native ACLs with fine-grained ALLOW and DENY rules for topics, groups, clusters and transactional IDs. | RabbitMQ allows operators to restrict users to specific virtual hosts and limit their permissions within each virtual host. |
| Documentation depth | The documentation includes product concepts, tier guidance, ACL procedures, integrations, metrics references, CLI commands, API calls and Terraform examples. | Versioned documentation is organized for developers and administrators and includes tutorials, configuration, management, monitoring and broker comparisons. |
| Integrations | Kafka Connect compatibility and a REST proxy are listed, and the service connects with other managed databases and streaming services. | RabbitMQ provides client libraries for Java, .NET/C#, Erlang, and other languages, and offers a community Docker image and Kubernetes operators. |
| Product | Aiven for Kafka is a managed version of Apache Kafka that handles provisioning, patching, high availability, backups, and security. | RabbitMQ is an open source messaging and streaming broker for application communication, including distributed microservices, real-time data, and IoT. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.3 out of 5 from 384 reviews for Aiven overall; the page lists 245 Aiven for Apache Kafka reviews. | 4.1 out of 5 from 46 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 36 ratings. | 4.6 out of 5 from 12 ratings |
| 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. | RabbitMQ documents authentication, authorization, topic permissions, TLS certificate mechanisms, LDAP and OAuth 2.0 backends. |
| What it does | Aiven for Apache Kafka is a fully managed Kafka service for event-driven applications, data pipelines and stream processing. | RabbitMQ is an enterprise-grade messaging and streaming broker for communication among applications, microservices and IoT systems. |
Plans
Aiven for Apache Kafka
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$35 a month
- Professional$180 a month
RabbitMQ
- Open-source RabbitMQFree
- Open Source RabbitMQ ServerFree
- Tanzu RabbitMQPriced on request
- VMware Tanzu RabbitMQPriced on request
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.
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ is an open source messaging and streaming broker for application communication, including distributed microservices, real-time data, and IoT. Publishers can route messages to one or more consumers using routing, filtering, streaming, and federation. Message acknowledgements and replication across a cluster support delivery reliability, and delivery guarantees are configurable. Supported protocols include AMQP 0-9-1, AMQP 1.0, MQTT, STOMP, RabbitMQ Streams, HTTP, and WebSocket, including browser communication over WebSocket. Client libraries are available for Java, .NET/C#, Erlang, and other languages; the project also offers a community Docker image and Kubernetes operators. RabbitMQ can run in cloud or on-premises environments, on local machines and physical or virtual hardware, and in containers. Linux, Windows, and macOS are supported; z/OS, most mainframes, and systems with less than 100 MB of RAM are not. The free, self-managed Open Source RabbitMQ Server is offered under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 with best-effort community support. VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ is a commercial offering with 24/7 support and enterprise features; pricing is by contact.