Best Real-Time Data Streaming Tools for Apache Kafka

StarTree Cloud is a fully-managed real-time analytics platform designed for OLAP at massive speed and scale for user-facing applications. Powered by Apache Pinot, StarTree Cloud provides enterprise-grade reliability and advanced capabilities such as tiered storage, scalable upserts, plus additional indexes and connectors. It integrates seamlessly with transactional databases and event streaming platforms, ingesting data at millions of events per second and indexing it for lightning-fast query responses. StarTree Cloud is available on your favorite public cloud or for private SaaS deployment. StarTree Cloud includes StarTree Data Manager, which allows you to ingest data from both real-time sources such as Amazon Kinesis, Apache Kafka, Apache Pulsar, or Redpanda, as well as batch data sources such as data warehouses like Snowflake, Delta Lake or Google BigQuery, or object stores like Amazon S3, Apache Flink, Apache Hadoop, or Apache Spark. StarTree ThirdEye is an add-on anomaly detection system running on top of StarTree Cloud that observes your business-critical metrics, alerting you and allowing you to perform root-cause analysis — all in real-time.

Aiven takes the reins on your open-source data infrastructure hosted in the cloud, allowing you to focus on what you excel at: developing applications. While you channel your energy into innovation, we expertly handle the complexities of managing cloud data infrastructure. Our solutions are entirely open source, providing the flexibility to transfer data between various clouds or establish multi-cloud setups. You will have complete visibility into your expenses, with a clear understanding of costs as we consolidate networking, storage, and basic support fees. Our dedication to ensuring your Aiven software remains operational is unwavering; should any challenges arise, you can count on us to resolve them promptly. You can launch a service on the Aiven platform in just 10 minutes and sign up without needing to provide credit card information. Simply select your desired open-source service along with the cloud and region for deployment, pick a suitable plan—which includes $300 in free credits—and hit "Create service" to begin configuring your data sources. Enjoy the benefits of maintaining control over your data while leveraging robust open-source services tailored to your needs. With Aiven, you can streamline your cloud operations and focus on driving your projects forward.

Materialize is an innovative reactive database designed to provide updates to views incrementally. It empowers developers to seamlessly work with streaming data through the use of standard SQL. One of the key advantages of Materialize is its ability to connect directly to a variety of external data sources without the need for pre-processing. Users can link to real-time streaming sources such as Kafka, Postgres databases, and change data capture (CDC), as well as access historical data from files or S3. The platform enables users to execute queries, perform joins, and transform various data sources using standard SQL, presenting the outcomes as incrementally-updated Materialized views. As new data is ingested, queries remain active and are continuously refreshed, allowing developers to create data visualizations or real-time applications with ease. Moreover, constructing applications that utilize streaming data becomes a straightforward task, often requiring just a few lines of SQL code, which significantly enhances productivity. With Materialize, developers can focus on building innovative solutions rather than getting bogged down in complex data management tasks.

Utilize Pipes to query and manipulate your data seamlessly, a novel method for linking SQL queries that draws inspiration from Python Notebooks. This approach aims to streamline complexity while maintaining optimal performance. By dividing your query into various nodes, you enhance both development and maintenance processes. With just a single click, you can activate your API endpoints that are ready for production use. Transformations happen instantly, ensuring you always have access to the most current data. You can securely share access to your data with just one click, providing quick and reliable results. In addition to offering monitoring capabilities, Tinybird is designed to scale effortlessly, so you need not be concerned about unexpected traffic surges. Visualize transforming any Data Stream or CSV file into a fully secured real-time analytics API endpoint in mere minutes. We advocate for high-frequency decision-making across every sector, including retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, government, advertising, entertainment, healthcare, and financial services, making data-driven insights accessible to all types of organizations. Our commitment is to empower businesses to make informed decisions swiftly, ensuring they stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.

Facilitates seamless data exchange among components within microservice architectures. When utilized as a communication method for microservices, it not only streamlines integration but also enhances reliability and scalability. The system allows for reading and writing data in nearly real-time, while providing the flexibility to set data throughput and storage durations according to specific requirements. Users can finely configure resources for processing data streams, accommodating anything from small streams of 100 KB/s to more substantial ones at 100 MB/s. Additionally, Yandex Data Transfer enables the delivery of a single stream to various targets with distinct retention policies. Data is automatically replicated across multiple availability zones that are geographically distributed, ensuring redundancy and accessibility. After the initial setup, managing data streams can be done centrally through either the management console or the API, offering convenient oversight. It also supports continuous data collection from diverse sources, including website browsing histories and application logs, making it a versatile tool for real-time analytics. Overall, Yandex Data Streams stands out for its robust capabilities in handling various data ingestion needs across different platforms.

Timeplus is an efficient, user-friendly stream processing platform that is both powerful and affordable. It comes packaged as a single binary, making it easy to deploy in various environments. Designed for data teams across diverse sectors, it enables the quick and intuitive processing of both streaming and historical data. With a lightweight design that requires no external dependencies, Timeplus offers comprehensive analytic capabilities for streaming and historical data. Its cost is just a fraction—1/10—of what similar open-source frameworks charge. Users can transform real-time market and transaction data into actionable insights seamlessly. The platform supports both append-only and key-value streams, making it ideal for monitoring financial information. Additionally, Timeplus allows the creation of real-time feature pipelines effortlessly. It serves as a unified solution for managing all infrastructure logs, metrics, and traces, which are essential for maintaining observability. Timeplus also accommodates a broad array of data sources through its user-friendly web console UI, while providing options to push data via REST API or to create external streams without the need to copy data into the platform. Overall, Timeplus offers a versatile and comprehensive approach to data processing for organizations looking to enhance their operational efficiency.

WarpStream serves as a data streaming platform that is fully compatible with Apache Kafka, leveraging object storage to eliminate inter-AZ networking expenses and disk management, while offering infinite scalability within your VPC. The deployment of WarpStream occurs through a stateless, auto-scaling agent binary, which operates without the need for local disk management. This innovative approach allows agents to stream data directly to and from object storage, bypassing local disk buffering and avoiding any data tiering challenges. Users can instantly create new “virtual clusters” through our control plane, accommodating various environments, teams, or projects without the hassle of dedicated infrastructure. With its seamless protocol compatibility with Apache Kafka, WarpStream allows you to continue using your preferred tools and software without any need for application rewrites or proprietary SDKs. By simply updating the URL in your Kafka client library, you can begin streaming immediately, ensuring that you never have to compromise between reliability and cost-effectiveness again. Additionally, this flexibility fosters an environment where innovation can thrive without the constraints of traditional infrastructure.

Streamkap is a modern streaming ETL platform built on top of Apache Kafka and Flink, designed to replace batch ETL with streaming in minutes. It enables data movement with sub-second latency using change data capture for minimal impact on source databases and real-time updates. The platform offers dozens of pre-built, no-code source connectors, automated schema drift handling, updates, data normalization, and high-performance CDC for efficient and low-impact data movement. Streaming transformations power faster, cheaper, and richer data pipelines, supporting Python and SQL transformations for common use cases like hashing, masking, aggregations, joins, and unnesting JSON. Streamkap allows users to connect data sources and move data to target destinations with an automated, reliable, and scalable data movement platform. It supports a broad range of event and database sources.

Lightstreamer acts as an event broker that is finely tuned for the internet, providing a smooth and instantaneous flow of data across online platforms. In contrast to conventional brokers, it adeptly manages the challenges posed by proxies, firewalls, disconnections, network congestion, and the inherent unpredictability of web connectivity. Its advanced streaming capabilities ensure that real-time data delivery is maintained, always finding efficient and reliable pathways for your information. Lightstreamer's technology is not only well-established but also at the cutting edge, continually adapting to remain a leader in the field of innovation. With a solid history and extensive practical experience, it guarantees dependable and effective data transmission. Users can count on Lightstreamer to provide unmatched reliability in any situation, making it an invaluable tool for real-time communication needs. In an ever-evolving digital landscape, Lightstreamer stands out as a trusted partner for delivering data seamlessly.

Aerospike is the global leader for next-generation, real time NoSQL data solutions at any scale. Aerospike helps enterprises overcome seemingly impossible data bottlenecks and compete with other companies at a fraction of the cost and complexity of legacy NoSQL databases. Aerospike's Hybrid Memory Architecture™ is a patented technology that unlocks the full potential of modern hardware and delivers previously unimaginable value. It does this by delivering unimaginable value from huge amounts of data at both the edge, core, and in the cloud. Aerospike empowers customers with the ability to instantly combat fraud, dramatically increase shopping cart sizes, deploy global digital payment networks, and provide instant, one-to-1 personalization for millions. Aerospike customers include Airtel and Banca d'Italia as well as Snap, Verizon Media, Wayfair, PayPal, Snap, Verizon Media, and Nielsen. The company's headquarters is in Mountain View, California. Additional locations are in London, Bengaluru, India, and Tel Aviv in Israel.

In the field of IoT stream processing and analytics, SQLstream ranks #1 according to ABI Research. Used by Verizon, Walmart, Cisco, and Amazon, our technology powers applications on premises, in the cloud, and at the edge. SQLstream enables time-critical alerts, live dashboards, and real-time action with sub-millisecond latency. Smart cities can reroute ambulances and fire trucks or optimize traffic light timing based on real-time conditions. Security systems can detect hackers and fraudsters, shutting them down right away. AI / ML models, trained with streaming sensor data, can predict equipment failures. Thanks to SQLstream's lightning performance -- up to 13 million rows / second / CPU core -- companies have drastically reduced their footprint and cost. Our efficient, in-memory processing allows operations at the edge that would otherwise be impossible. Acquire, prepare, analyze, and act on data in any format from any source. Create pipelines in minutes not months with StreamLab, our interactive, low-code, GUI dev environment. Edit scripts instantly and view instantaneous results without compiling. Deploy with native Kubernetes support. Easy installation includes Docker, AWS, Azure, Linux, VMWare, and more

The Streaming service is a real-time, serverless platform for event streaming that is compatible with Apache Kafka, designed specifically for developers and data scientists. It is seamlessly integrated with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Database, GoldenGate, and Integration Cloud. Furthermore, the service offers ready-made integrations with numerous third-party products spanning various categories, including DevOps, databases, big data, and SaaS applications. Data engineers can effortlessly establish and manage extensive big data pipelines. Oracle takes care of all aspects of infrastructure and platform management for event streaming, which encompasses provisioning, scaling, and applying security updates. Additionally, by utilizing consumer groups, Streaming effectively manages state for thousands of consumers, making it easier for developers to create applications that can scale efficiently. This comprehensive approach not only streamlines the development process but also enhances overall operational efficiency.

DeltaStream is an integrated serverless streaming processing platform that integrates seamlessly with streaming storage services. Imagine it as a compute layer on top your streaming storage. It offers streaming databases and streaming analytics along with other features to provide an integrated platform for managing, processing, securing and sharing streaming data. DeltaStream has a SQL-based interface that allows you to easily create stream processing apps such as streaming pipelines. It uses Apache Flink, a pluggable stream processing engine. DeltaStream is much more than a query-processing layer on top Kafka or Kinesis. It brings relational databases concepts to the world of data streaming, including namespacing, role-based access control, and enables you to securely access and process your streaming data, regardless of where it is stored.

A live data platform based on Change Data Capture (CDC) facilitates the replication of diverse databases, supports real-time data integration, and assists in constructing a real-time data warehouse. By implementing CDC to synchronize production line information stored in DB2 and Oracle with a modern database, TapData has empowered an AI-enhanced real-time dispatch application that streamlines the semiconductor manufacturing process. The availability of real-time data has enabled prompt decision-making within the RTD application, resulting in quicker turnaround times and increased production yield. As a major telecommunications provider, the client operates numerous regional systems designed to serve local users effectively. By consolidating and integrating data from multiple sources and locations into a single centralized data repository, the client successfully established an order center that aggregates orders from various applications. Additionally, TapData integrates inventory data from over 500 stores, delivering real-time insights into stock availability and customer preferences, thereby significantly boosting supply chain efficiency. This innovative approach not only enhances operational performance but also positions the client to respond swiftly to market demands.

The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform empowers every member of your organization to leverage data and artificial intelligence effectively. Constructed on a lakehouse architecture, it establishes a cohesive and transparent foundation for all aspects of data management and governance, enhanced by a Data Intelligence Engine that recognizes the distinct characteristics of your data. Companies that excel across various sectors will be those that harness the power of data and AI. Covering everything from ETL processes to data warehousing and generative AI, Databricks facilitates the streamlining and acceleration of your data and AI objectives. By merging generative AI with the integrative advantages of a lakehouse, Databricks fuels a Data Intelligence Engine that comprehends the specific semantics of your data. This functionality enables the platform to optimize performance automatically and manage infrastructure in a manner tailored to your organization's needs. Additionally, the Data Intelligence Engine is designed to grasp the unique language of your enterprise, making the search and exploration of new data as straightforward as posing a question to a colleague, thus fostering collaboration and efficiency. Ultimately, this innovative approach transforms the way organizations interact with their data, driving better decision-making and insights.

Data integration for hybrid clouds Modern, reliable data integration across both your private cloud and public cloud. All this in real-time, with change data capture and streams. Striim was developed by the executive and technical team at GoldenGate Software. They have decades of experience in mission critical enterprise workloads. Striim can be deployed in your environment as a distributed platform or in the cloud. Your team can easily adjust the scaleability of Striim. Striim is fully secured with HIPAA compliance and GDPR compliance. Built from the ground up to support modern enterprise workloads, whether they are hosted in the cloud or on-premise. Drag and drop to create data flows among your sources and targets. Real-time SQL queries allow you to process, enrich, and analyze streaming data.

Apache Storm is a distributed computation system that is both free and open source, designed for real-time data processing. It simplifies the reliable handling of endless data streams, similar to how Hadoop revolutionized batch processing. The platform is user-friendly, compatible with various programming languages, and offers an enjoyable experience for developers. With numerous applications including real-time analytics, online machine learning, continuous computation, distributed RPC, and ETL, Apache Storm proves its versatility. It's remarkably fast, with benchmarks showing it can process over a million tuples per second on a single node. Additionally, it is scalable and fault-tolerant, ensuring that data processing is both reliable and efficient. Setting up and managing Apache Storm is straightforward, and it seamlessly integrates with existing queueing and database technologies. Users can design Apache Storm topologies to consume and process data streams in complex manners, allowing for flexible repartitioning between different stages of computation. For further insights, be sure to explore the detailed tutorial available.

IBM Event Streams is a comprehensive event streaming service based on Apache Kafka, aimed at assisting businesses in managing and reacting to real-time data flows. It offers features such as machine learning integration, high availability, and secure deployment in the cloud, empowering organizations to develop smart applications that respond to events in real time. The platform is designed to accommodate multi-cloud infrastructures, disaster recovery options, and geo-replication, making it particularly suitable for critical operational tasks. By facilitating the construction and scaling of real-time, event-driven solutions, IBM Event Streams ensures that data is processed with speed and efficiency, ultimately enhancing business agility and responsiveness. As a result, organizations can harness the power of real-time data to drive innovation and improve decision-making processes.

Introducing revolutionary data streaming features that enable unparalleled customer experiences. The Kafka API and its ecosystem are fully compatible with Redpanda, which boasts predictable low latencies and ensures zero data loss. Redpanda is designed to outperform Kafka by up to ten times, offering enterprise-level support and timely hotfixes. It also includes automated backups to S3 or GCS, providing a complete escape from the routine operations associated with Kafka. Additionally, it supports both AWS and GCP environments, making it a versatile choice for various cloud platforms. Built from the ground up for ease of installation, Redpanda allows for rapid deployment of streaming services. Once you witness its incredible capabilities, you can confidently utilize its advanced features in a production setting. We take care of provisioning, monitoring, and upgrades without requiring access to your cloud credentials, ensuring that sensitive data remains within your environment. Your streaming infrastructure will be provisioned, operated, and maintained seamlessly, with customizable instance types available to suit your specific needs. As your requirements evolve, expanding your cluster is straightforward and efficient, allowing for sustainable growth.

Samza enables the development of stateful applications that can handle real-time data processing from various origins, such as Apache Kafka. Proven to perform effectively at scale, it offers versatile deployment choices, allowing execution on YARN or as an independent library. With the capability to deliver remarkably low latencies and high throughput, Samza provides instantaneous data analysis. It can manage multiple terabytes of state through features like incremental checkpoints and host-affinity, ensuring efficient data handling. Additionally, Samza's operational simplicity is enhanced by its deployment flexibility—whether on YARN, Kubernetes, or in standalone mode. Users can leverage the same codebase to seamlessly process both batch and streaming data, which streamlines development efforts. Furthermore, Samza integrates with a wide range of data sources, including Kafka, HDFS, AWS Kinesis, Azure Event Hubs, key-value stores, and ElasticSearch, making it a highly adaptable tool for modern data processing needs.

VeloDB, which utilizes Apache Doris, represents a cutting-edge data warehouse designed for rapid analytics on large-scale real-time data. It features both push-based micro-batch and pull-based streaming data ingestion that occurs in mere seconds, alongside a storage engine capable of real-time upserts, appends, and pre-aggregations. The platform delivers exceptional performance for real-time data serving and allows for dynamic interactive ad-hoc queries. VeloDB accommodates not only structured data but also semi-structured formats, supporting both real-time analytics and batch processing capabilities. Moreover, it functions as a federated query engine, enabling seamless access to external data lakes and databases in addition to internal data. The system is designed for distribution, ensuring linear scalability. Users can deploy it on-premises or as a cloud service, allowing for adaptable resource allocation based on workload demands, whether through separation or integration of storage and compute resources. Leveraging the strengths of open-source Apache Doris, VeloDB supports the MySQL protocol and various functions, allowing for straightforward integration with a wide range of data tools, ensuring flexibility and compatibility across different environments.

Scale from zero to millions of events per second effortlessly. Arroyo is delivered as a single, compact binary, allowing for local development on MacOS or Linux, and seamless deployment to production environments using Docker or Kubernetes. As a pioneering stream processing engine, Arroyo has been specifically designed to simplify real-time processing, making it more accessible than traditional batch processing. Its architecture empowers anyone with SQL knowledge to create dependable, efficient, and accurate streaming pipelines. Data scientists and engineers can independently develop comprehensive real-time applications, models, and dashboards without needing a specialized team of streaming professionals. By employing SQL, users can transform, filter, aggregate, and join data streams, all while achieving sub-second response times. Your streaming pipelines should remain stable and not trigger alerts simply because Kubernetes has chosen to reschedule your pods. Built for modern, elastic cloud infrastructures, Arroyo supports everything from straightforward container runtimes like Fargate to complex, distributed setups on Kubernetes, ensuring versatility and robust performance across various environments. This innovative approach to stream processing significantly enhances the ability to manage data flows in real-time applications.