Apache Pulsar vs Pravega
Apache Pulsar
pulsar.apache.orgPravega
pravega.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache Pulsar | Pravega |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 8.1 (#7) | 6.9 (#18) |
| Deployment | Pulsar can run in Docker or Kubernetes, and the project offers a Helm chart for Kubernetes deployment. | Pravega offers standalone mode for development and testing and distributed mode for production, including Kubernetes operators and Docker Swarm deployment options. |
| Integrations | Built-in connectors import and export data for systems including Kafka, RabbitMQ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. | The documented connectors include Apache Flink, Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, Presto, Boomi, and Apache NiFi. |
| What it does | Apache Pulsar is an open-source, distributed messaging and streaming platform built for the cloud. | Pravega is an open-source storage system that uses streams to store continuous, unbounded data. |
Plans
In their own words
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.
Pravega
Pravega is an open-source, self-hosted storage system built around durable append-only streams for continuous, unbounded data. Streams hold parallel byte sequences, can scale as ingestion changes, and use automatic tiering to scale-out storage. Data may be retained indefinitely, allowing applications to read current and historical events. Pravega describes exactly-once delivery and processing with ordering guarantees despite client, server, or network failures, and transactions can write event sets atomically. It targets streaming applications, IoT data, and batch or interactive analytics. Connectors are listed for Apache Flink, Spark, Hadoop, Presto, Boomi, and Apache NiFi; client languages include Java, Rust, and Python. Deployment options include a single-process standalone server or distributed mode with Docker Compose. Distributed production deployments list Java 11, supported long-term storage, ZooKeeper 3.6.3, and BookKeeper 4.14.1. TLS and role-based access control are configurable.