Amazon Kinesis Data Streams vs Apache RocketMQ
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
aws.amazon.comApache RocketMQ
rocketmq.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Kinesis Data Streams | Apache RocketMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 2 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 7.4 (#16) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Scale | It can continuously capture gigabytes of data per second from hundreds of thousands of sources. | The project site describes million-level LiteTopics per cluster and says RocketMQ has demonstrated 10M+ TPS throughput. |
| Security | The service supports server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service keys and private access through Amazon VPC. | RocketMQ provides ACL and TLS, but operators must configure ACL or restrict access to trusted networks; the security guide warns that ACL is not enabled by default. |
| Use cases | AWS describes use cases including log and event streaming, real-time analytics, event-driven applications, and real-time AI and machine-learning applications. | Its asynchronous model is suited to decoupling systems and shifting loads between upstream and downstream services. |
| What it does | Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a serverless, real-time data streaming service for capturing, processing, and analyzing data streams at any scale. | Apache RocketMQ is a distributed messaging and streaming platform designed for low latency, high throughput, reliability and very large scale. |
Plans
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- On-demand AdvantagePrice not published
- On-demand StandardPrice not published
- Provisioned modePrice not published
Apache RocketMQ
- Apache RocketMQFree
- Apache RocketMQ open-source distributionFree
In their own words
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a cloud, serverless service for capturing, processing, and analyzing live data streams. It can continuously capture gigabytes per second from hundreds of thousands of sources, then make records available to multiple real-time analytics applications, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, or AWS Lambda within 70 milliseconds of collection. Data is synchronously replicated across three Availability Zones in an AWS Region. Each stream supports up to 20 consumers with dedicated read throughput, and retention can be configured for as long as 365 days. Server-side encryption uses AWS Key Management Service keys, while Amazon VPC provides private access. Integrations include DynamoDB, Aurora, Database Migration Service, CloudWatch, Lambda, Managed Service for Apache Flink, and Kinesis Data Firehose. Records can be delivered to Amazon S3 Tables as Apache Iceberg tables or to S3 buckets in source format. It supports log and event streaming, real-time analytics, event-driven applications, and real-time AI or machine-learning workloads. Access is through an API or web interface. Pricing is paid from $0.03, with no free plan or AWS Free Tier availability.
Apache RocketMQ
Apache RocketMQ is distributed middleware for asynchronous communication and publish/subscribe messaging. Its asynchronous model can separate systems and shift loads between upstream and downstream services. Messaging options include publish/subscribe, request/reply, streaming, transactional messages, FIFO ordering, filtering, and push or pull consumption. The project lists durable persistence, replication, failover, fault tolerance, high-availability options, and cross-region disaster recovery. Its site describes million-level LiteTopics per cluster and says RocketMQ has demonstrated 10M+ TPS throughput. It can run locally, in Docker, or Kubernetes, with source and binary packages available. The ecosystem includes EventBridge, MQTT, RocketMQ Connect, RocketMQ Streams, Spring, Flink, Prometheus Exporter, and a Kubernetes Operator; AI options include native MCP support, A2A compatibility, and integrations with LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, AgentScope, Dify, and Coze. The project lists gRPC SDKs for Java, Go, Python, C++, and Rust, plus gRPC, MQTT, JMS, and OpenMessaging protocols. It is free under Apache License 2.0. ACL is not enabled by default.