What Apache Kafka does

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform developed by The Apache Software Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and released under the Apache License v2. Originally created at LinkedIn circa 2010-2011 and open-sourced in 2012, the platform provides publish/subscribe messaging, durable storage, and stream processing used for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications. More than 80% of Fortune 100 companies use Apache Kafka, with 10 of the 10 largest companies in manufacturing, insurance, and energy/utilities relying on it; named enterprise adopters include Discover Financial Services, Mastercard, and American Express. Production deployments handle trillions of messages per day and petabytes of data, with latencies as low as 2ms and partition counts up to 1.9 million per cluster since the Kafka 4.0 release.

The platform is composed of three primary components: the core distributed broker cluster with partitioned and replicated topics; Kafka Streams, a client library for stream processing with joins, aggregations, filters, transformations, event-time processing, and exactly-once semantics; and Kafka Connect, an integration framework providing pre-built connectors to hundreds of external systems including PostgreSQL, JMS, Elasticsearch, and AWS S3. Architecture innovations in recent releases include the KRaft consensus protocol (which removed the ZooKeeper dependency in 4.0 and is currently being extended toward a diskless future in proposed KIP-1150 work), tiered storage offload to S3-style object stores (KIP-405) enabling approximately 90% storage cost reductions, native JWT/OAuth 2.0/OIDC authentication added in 4.1, and queue semantics with share groups via KIP-932. Major hyperscaler and vendor partnerships with AWS (MSK), Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Aiven, and Confluent extend Kafka distribution globally.

Because Apache Kafka is open-source and non-profit, the project itself generates no revenue; downloads are free and the foundation is funded through donations and corporate sponsorships. Economic value accrues to commercial ecosystem partners such as Confluent, AWS, Google, Alibaba, and Aiven, who provide managed services, enterprise support, and proprietary extensions. The community-led go-to-market model relies on the annual Kafka Summit conference, hundreds of worldwide meetups, comprehensive documentation, and one of the five most active contributor communities within the Apache Software Foundation.

Name

Apache Kafka

Legal name

The Apache Software Foundation

Website

https://kafka.apache.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2011

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform governed by the Apache Software Foundation, used by more than 80% of Fortune 100 companies for data pipelines, streaming analytics, and mission-critical applications. It provides publish/subscribe messaging, Kafka Streams for stream processing, and Kafka Connect for integrations.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Event Streaming Platform

NAICS

Software Publishers (513210), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Event Streaming & Pub/Sub Platforms (HDAEAIAD)

akta.pro secondary industry

Connector/Adapter Frameworks & Integration Runtimes (HDAEACAJ)

Keywords

• Distributed event streaming
• Open source messaging
• Data pipeline platform
• Stream processing software
• Real-time data integration

Headquarters

HQ city

Sunnyvale

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Operations, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Apache License (Open Source): Apache Kafka is released under the Apache License v2, making it free for all users to download, use, modify, and distribute. The open-source project is maintained by the Apache Software Foundation and funded through donations and sponsorships rather than licensing fees.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels6 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform used by enterprises for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications. The core offering is a publish/subscribe messaging system with durable permanent storage, paired with Kafka Connect for source/sink integration and Kafka Streams for built-in stream processing (joins, aggregations, event-time and exactly-once semantics). Production deployments can scale to a thousand brokers, trillions of messages per day, and petabytes of data with latencies as low as 2ms.

Product overview

Apache Kafka is a unified platform consisting of a core distributed event streaming platform with add-on modules. The core Apache Kafka platform provides publish/subscribe capabilities, durable permanent storage, and scalable message broker functionality. Two key add-on modules extend the core: Kafka Connect provides integration frameworks for connecting external systems as event sources and sinks (including databases like PostgreSQL, messaging systems like JMS, Elasticsearch, and AWS S3), while Kafka Streams offers a client-side library for building real-time stream processing applications with event-time processing, exactly-once semantics, and windowed operations.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Kafka Streams: A client library for building applications and microservices that process streams of events. It provides higher-level functions to process event streams including transformations, stateful operations like aggregations and joins, windowing, processing based on event-time, and exactly-once processing.
• Kafka Connect

Products and services

• Apache Kafka (Core Platform) Open-source distributed event streaming platform used by enterprises for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications. Provides publish/subscribe messaging, durable permanent storage, and scalable message broker functionality, with five core APIs (Admin, Producer, Consumer, Streams, Connect) for Java and Scala and community clients for Go, Python, and C/C++. Production deployments can scale to a thousand brokers, trillions of messages per day, petabytes of data, hundreds of thousands of partitions, with latencies as low as 2ms.
• Kafka Connect

Quantifiable outcome

• 90% storage cost savings achieved by Discover Financial Services through tiered storage offloading to S3
• +5 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments6 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• ConfluentcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerConfluent was founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka and provides the leading commercial distribution of Kafka. Confluent Platform adds enterprise features, support, and training, while Confluent Cloud offers a fully managed Kafka service. Confluent contributes significantly to the open-source Kafka project and maintains the largest ecosystem of Kafka connectors and tools.
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)coreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorAWS offers Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka), a fully managed service that makes it easy to build and run applications that use Apache Kafka. This partnership extends Kafka's reach to AWS's massive enterprise customer base with simplified deployment.
• Google CloudcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorGoogle Cloud provides a managed Kafka service and supports Kafka-compatible integrations. Google is also a significant contributor to the broader data streaming ecosystem with Apache Flink as a complementary technology.
• AivenflagshipChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorAiven provides fully managed open-source data infrastructure including Kafka. Aiven contributed the diskless Kafka proposal (KIP-1150) and continues to innovate on Kafka architecture for cloud-native deployments.
• Apache FlinkcoreTechnology or IntegrationApache Flink and Apache Kafka are commonly used together in streaming data pipelines, with Kafka serving as the message broker and Flink providing stateful stream processing capabilities. Flink is widely recognized as a complementary stream processing standard alongside Kafka's event streaming platform.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Confluent: Founded by Apache Kafka's original creators, Confluent provides the leading commercial distribution and fully managed cloud service for Kafka. It is the closest commercial analog and exercises disproportionate influence over the open-source project roadmap.
• Redpanda: Kafka-compatible event streaming platform written in C++ that markets materially better latency and simpler operations than JVM-based Kafka. Targets the same workloads with a wire-compatible API.
• Apache Pulsar: Open-source distributed pub/sub and streaming system under the Apache Software Foundation. Competes directly with Kafka in messaging and streaming use cases, with tiered storage and multi-tenancy as differentiating design choices.
• NATS: Lightweight open-source messaging system with JetStream persistence layer. Competes with Kafka in lightweight pub/sub and at-least-once messaging workloads, particularly in cloud-native and edge environments.

Broad incumbents

• RabbitMQ: Long-established open-source message broker widely used for traditional message queue workloads. As Kafka absorbs queue semantics via KIP-932, RabbitMQ is increasingly in overlap with Kafka's addressable use cases.
• Amazon Kinesis Data Streams: AWS-native streaming service offered alongside AWS MSK. Competes for the same workloads as Kafka within the AWS ecosystem and represents the principal fork risk from a hyperscaler.
• Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Google Cloud's fully managed messaging and streaming service, offered alongside its Kafka managed service. Targets similar event-driven workloads globally and competes for greenfield deployments on GCP.
• Azure Event Hubs: Azure's managed event ingestion service with a Kafka-compatible API tier. Competes for streaming workloads on Microsoft Azure and influences the protocol-compatibility landscape.

Emerging players

• Aiven: Provides fully managed open-source data infrastructure including managed Apache Kafka. Aiven contributed the diskless Kafka KIP-1150 proposal and is an active contributor to the open-source project, blurring the line between peer and partner.

Others

• Apache Flink: Complementary stream processing framework frequently deployed on top of Kafka. While not a direct competitor (it is a consumer rather than a broker), the two are commonly positioned as a unified streaming stack and the closest ecosystem peer in the Apache ecosystem.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/apache/kafka

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Apache Kafka