DataStax Astra Streaming vs RisingWave
DataStax Astra Streaming
docs.datastax.com
RisingWave
risingwave.comSide by side
| Figure | DataStax Astra Streaming | RisingWave |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.23/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 3 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 7.8 (#13) | 8.0 (#9) |
| Security | Shared tenants use Pulsar authentication and authorization alongside Astra organization RBAC, with tenant-scoped roles and permissions. | RisingWave security guidance covers TLS/SSL in transit, S3 encryption at rest, certificate or password authentication, role-based grants, and SQL-based data masking. |
| Support | The documentation directs customers to IBM Support for requests such as private connectivity and unavailable regions. | RisingWave offers standard support on Basic, premium 24x7 support as an option on Pro, and premium support with SLA and quarterly success reviews for self-managed deployments. |
Plans
DataStax Astra Streaming
- Free tierFree
- Paid Astra Streaming plansPriced on request
In their own words
DataStax Astra Streaming
DataStax Astra Streaming is a managed cloud service for streaming data and processing event streams, powered by Apache Pulsar. It provides messaging for streaming, publish-subscribe workflows, and queuing, and supports real-time event processing and change data capture. Users manage Pulsar tenants and resources such as topics, connectors, functions, and subscriptions through the Astra Portal, APIs, or related tools. Applications connect through open-source Apache Pulsar client APIs; the service runs Pulsar 3.1 and recommends that API version or higher. Included connectors cover Astra DB and Cassandra, Kafka, AWS Kinesis, Cloud Storage, Elasticsearch, BigQuery, JDBC databases, Snowflake, and selected source systems including Debezium-supported databases. Connections use authentication, authorization, and TLS. Shared clusters have defined tenant, namespace, topic, message-size, and throughput limits. Custom source and sink connectors are not supported, and experimental connectors are not fully supported or tested. A free tier is listed at free; paid pricing is usage-based and varies by region and usage.
RisingWave
RisingWave is a distributed SQL platform for ingesting, transforming, and serving real-time data. Its SQL interface is wire-compatible with PostgreSQL, so PostgreSQL clients, drivers, and tools can connect. New events incrementally refresh materialized views. Barrier-based checkpointing and consistent snapshots support exactly-once processing, while data is persisted in S3-compatible object storage and connector offsets are checkpointed for delivery durability. RisingWave lists 31+ native connectors, including Kafka, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Iceberg, Snowflake, BigQuery, S3, Redis, and Elasticsearch. Self-managed deployments are Apache 2.0 open source, with Docker, Kubernetes, cloud VM, and on-premises options. The hosted Basic plan is $0.23 a month, pay-as-you-go, limited to 64 cores and available in select regions; a free plan and 7-day trial are also listed. Basic includes standard support. Premium 24x7 support can be purchased with Pro, while self-managed deployments offer premium support with an SLA and quarterly success reviews. Listed platforms include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, and web.