| Underlying Tech | Built on Apache Kafka, fully managed + extended with industry-specific tooling | Offers a fully managed Apache Kafka service, handling provisioning, maintenance, and scaling. |
| Deployment Model | BYOC-first – fully runs inside customer cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) | BYOC still maturing – only available under Advanced support tier |
| Kafka API Compatibility | Full Kafka API coverage – built on upstream Kafka | Full Kafka API compatibility |
| Latency Under Load | Consistent low-latency even under high-throughput – designed for real-time ops | Depends on infra class – latency is generally good but not specifically optimized for domain |
| Storage & Billing Model | Streaming-first pricing (based on throughput & infra efficiency) | Storage-based billing – pricing grows with disk, even if messages aren’t read often |
| Verticalized Ecosystem | Prebuilt industry-specific transforms & connectors (logistics, mining, automotive, etc.) | Generic platform – no vertical focus or prebuilt domain logic |
| Custom Transformations | Built-in IDE with multi-language (Python, JS, Rust) support for custom stream logic | Requires external tools – no native transformation UI or low-code logic editor |
| Cloud Spend Optimization | Uses domain heuristics and streaming patterns to optimize infra costs | User-managed instance types, storage growth = cost growth, no domain-specific tuning |
| Streaming Workflow | Full pipeline: ingestion → transformation → enrichment → analytics | Kafka-only; users must build external logic (e.g., Kafka Streams, Flink, Lambda) |
| Managed Connectors | Prebuilt integrations specific to industries and telematics | 30+ Kafka Connect connectors for general-purpose data movement |
| Scaling Model | Kafka-native scaling + platform-aware tuning | Auto-scaling available via Aiven console or APIs |
| Developer Experience | Integrated UI + IDE + versioned pipelines | CLI, Terraform, web UI – no embedded development environment |
| Security & Compliance | Inherits customer's cloud security stack (data never leaves) | SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR ready |
| Observability & Ops | Purpose-built UI with alerts, performance graphs, and real-time monitoring | Monitoring via Aiven console, integrations with Datadog, Prometheus, etc. |
