AutoMQ vs Lightstreamer
AutoMQ
automq.comLightstreamer
lightstreamer.comSide by side
| Figure | AutoMQ | Lightstreamer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $300/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 5 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 8.4 (#3) | 7.9 (#11) |
| Deployment | AutoMQ Software can be deployed on premises, in private or public clouds, using a binary, Helm, or Docker Compose. | Lightstreamer can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and supports Helm, Docker, and Kubernetes. |
| Founded | 2022 | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Hong Kong | Milan, Italy |
| Security | 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. | The broker supports TLS with configurable cipher suites, client and server certificates, mutual authentication, and custom authentication and authorization through a Metadata Adapter. |
Plans
Lightstreamer
- Demo LicenseFree
- Annual subscription — Per Client LicensePrice not published
- Annual subscription — Per Server LicensePrice not published
- PAYG — Per Client-Hour LicensePrice not published
- PAYG — Per Core-Hour LicensePrice not published
In their own words
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.
Lightstreamer
Lightstreamer is an event broker for delivering real-time data to web and mobile applications, including across proxies, firewalls, disconnections, and network congestion. Intelligent Streaming adjusts data flow to network conditions and can resample or combine updates to keep users synchronized. Messaging options include publish/subscribe, request/response, client-to-server messaging, and fine-grained item and field subscriptions. StreamSense chooses WebSockets or HTTP connections for each client, including through restrictive firewalls and legacy proxies.
Ready-made connectors cover Kafka, MQTT, and JMS, with named examples including Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK, Redpanda, AWS IoT Core, IBM MQ, and ActiveMQ. Custom adapters can be built with Java, Python, Node.js, .NET, and TCP sockets. Lightstreamer supports TLS, certificates, mutual authentication, and custom authentication and authorization. It can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, with Helm, Docker, and Kubernetes support. Monitoring options include a web dashboard, configurable logs, JMX, Prometheus, and Grafana integrations. The free Non-Production Limited License requires a Production License and a server restart after at most 210 minutes of uptime.