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Streamkap vs Amazon MSK

Amazon MSK gives you managed Kafka. Streamkap gives you managed CDC, Kafka, and Flink in one platform. Skip the integration work.

TL;DR: Choose Streamkap for a complete streaming platform with CDC and transforms included. Choose MSK if you only need managed Kafka and want to build everything else yourself.

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1
Platform

vs assembling CDC + Kafka + Flink yourself

Minutes
Time to Value

vs weeks of integration work

0
Kafka Ops

No clusters, partitions, or brokers to manage

Feature Comparison

Feature
Streamkap
Amazon MSK
What you get
CDC + Kafka + Flink platform
Managed Kafka only
CDC capability
Built-in Debezium CDC
Deploy yourself (Kafka Connect)
Stream processing
Apache Flink included
Deploy yourself or use Flink on AWS
Schema Registry
Included
AWS Glue Schema Registry (separate)
Connector management
UI/API/Terraform
Kafka Connect (self-managed)
Partition management
Automatic
Manual
Broker scaling
Automatic
Manual provisioning
Data destinations
50+ pre-built sinks
Build your own consumers
Monitoring
Built-in dashboards
CloudWatch + custom setup
Pricing model
Per GB processed
Per broker-hour + storage + transfer
Setup time
Minutes
Days to weeks
Team expertise needed
None
Kafka + AWS expertise

Understanding the Differences

What Amazon MSK Provides

Amazon MSK is a fully managed Apache Kafka service. It handles Kafka broker provisioning, patching, and basic monitoring.

  • You still need to set up Kafka Connect for CDC
  • You need to deploy and manage Debezium connectors
  • Stream processing requires additional services (Flink, KDA)
  • You build and maintain your own sink consumers
  • Partitioning, topic management, and schema design are your responsibility

What Streamkap Provides

Streamkap is a complete streaming platform with CDC, Kafka, and Flink integrated and managed as one service.

  • CDC connectors work out of the box
  • Stream processing with Flink is built-in
  • 50+ destination connectors included
  • No Kafka operations - it's abstracted away
  • One platform, one bill, one support team

Cost Considerations

MSK pricing is based on broker-hours, storage, and data transfer. Real costs include engineering time to build and maintain the full pipeline.

  • MSK: $0.21-$0.54/hour per broker (min 2-3 brokers)
  • MSK: Additional costs for Kafka Connect cluster
  • MSK: Additional costs for Flink/KDA if needed
  • MSK: Hidden cost of engineering time (weeks of integration)
  • Streamkap: Simple per-GB pricing, everything included

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Streamkap if you need:

  • Teams who need CDC to warehouse/lake pipelines
  • Organizations without dedicated Kafka expertise
  • Projects requiring fast time-to-value
  • Use cases needing built-in stream transforms
  • Companies preferring predictable per-GB pricing
  • Teams who want to focus on data, not infrastructure
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Consider Amazon MSK if you need:

  • Organizations with existing Kafka expertise
  • Use cases requiring custom Kafka consumer apps
  • Teams who want full control over Kafka configuration
  • Existing AWS-centric architectures
  • Workloads requiring specific Kafka features
  • Teams building custom streaming applications

Skip the Kafka ops

Get a complete streaming platform without managing Kafka clusters. Free 30-day trial.

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