Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka vs AutoMQ
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
aws.amazon.com
AutoMQ
automq.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka | AutoMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.11/mo | $300/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 2 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 7.9 (#10) | 8.4 (#3) |
| Compliance | AWS states that it supports 143 security standards and compliance certifications, including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-3, and NIST 800-171. | AutoMQ lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR programs on its security page. |
| Security | MSK supports IAM access control, SASL/SCRAM or mutual TLS authentication for Provisioned clusters, and encryption at rest and in transit. | The security page describes TLS or mTLS for Kafka client connections, optional encryption at rest for AWS BYOC, and RBAC for AutoMQ Cloud control-plane operations. |
Plans
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
- MSK Connect$0.11 a month
- MSK Provisioned — Standard brokers$0.20 a month
- MSK Replicator$0.30 a month
- MSK Provisioned — Express brokers$0.41 a month
- MSK Serverless$0.75 a month
In their own words
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) manages Apache Kafka infrastructure on AWS for developers and platform engineers. It provisions and configures clusters, replaces failed servers, coordinates patches and upgrades, and handles monitoring and scaling. Provisioned clusters let customers choose broker and storage options, while Serverless clusters adjust resources to workload needs. MSK keeps compatibility with the Apache Kafka client protocol, so existing Kafka applications and tools can work without application code changes. Integrations include Amazon S3, Redshift, Managed Service for Apache Flink, Lambda, Glue Schema Registry, and Database Migration Service. Clusters span multiple Availability Zones, with three as the default, and the service-level agreement specifies three 9s of availability. Security includes IAM, SASL/SCRAM or mutual TLS for Provisioned clusters, and encryption in transit and at rest. CloudWatch supplies over 50 default metrics at no additional cost. MSK is paid, with separate charges possible for storage, processing, connectivity, and enhanced metrics.
AutoMQ
AutoMQ is Kafka-compatible streaming software that runs Kafka on cloud object storage. It supports S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, and Ceph, and can be deployed on premises or in private and public clouds by binary, Helm, or Docker Compose. AutoMQ states sub-10ms P99 latency and automatic scaling with traffic, including partition rebalancing across brokers. Table Topic can materialize Kafka topics as Iceberg or Delta Lake tables without ETL pipelines, for direct querying with Spark, Trino, or Flink. Managed Connector runs Kafka Connect workers in a customer’s Kubernetes environment, with logs and monitoring for throughput, task health, failures, and anomalies. The platform lists stream processing, schema registry, exactly-once delivery, a maximum 90-day retention period, and 300 connectors. Supported client languages include Java, C/C++, Go, Python, and NodeJS. Pro costs $300 a month; Enterprise pricing is by contact. There is no free plan, but a 30-day free trial requires no credit card.