Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Kafka VS logstash

Compare Kafka VS logstash and see what are their differences

Kafka logo Kafka

Apache Kafka is publish-subscribe messaging rethought as a distributed commit log.

logstash logo logstash

logstash is a tool for managing events and logs.
  • Kafka Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-24
  • logstash Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

Kafka features and specs

  • High Throughput
    Apache Kafka is capable of handling a large volume of data with very low latency, making it ideal for real-time data processing applications.
  • Scalability
    Kafka can effortlessly scale out by adding more brokers to a cluster, allowing it to handle increased data loads.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Kafka offers built-in replication and fault tolerance, ensuring that data is not lost even if some brokers or nodes fail.
  • Durability
    Messages in Kafka are persistently stored on disk, providing durability and data recovery capabilities in case of failures.
  • Stream Processing
    Kafka, along with Kafka Streams, offers powerful stream processing capabilities, allowing real-time data transformation and processing.
  • Ecosystem
    Kafka has a rich ecosystem that includes Kafka Connect for data integration, Kafka Streams for stream processing, and many other tools that make it easier to work with data.
  • Language Support
    Kafka clients are available in multiple programming languages, providing flexibility in choosing the technology stack for your project.

Possible disadvantages of Kafka

  • Complexity
    Setting up and managing a Kafka cluster can be complex, requiring expertise in distributed systems and careful configuration.
  • Resource Intensive
    Kafka can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and CPU resources, especially at scale.
  • Operational Overhead
    Maintaining Kafka clusters involves considerable operational overhead, including monitoring, tuning, and managing brokers and partitions.
  • Data Ordering
    While Kafka guarantees ordering within a partition, maintaining total order across a topic with multiple partitions can be challenging.
  • Latency
    In certain use-cases, such as strict low-latency requirements, Kafka’s design might introduce higher latency as compared to some specialized messaging systems.
  • Learning Curve
    Kafka has a steep learning curve, which might make it harder for new developers to get started quickly.
  • Data Storage
    Despite Kafka’s durability features, large volumes of data storage can become costly and need careful management to avoid sluggish performance.

logstash features and specs

  • Flexible Data Collection
    Logstash supports a wide variety of inputs, filters, and outputs, enabling it to collect, process, and forward data from numerous sources with ease.
  • Real-Time Processing
    Logstash can process logs and event data in real-time, enabling quick aggregation, transformation, and forwarding for timely insights and actions.
  • Ecosystem Integration
    As part of the Elastic Stack, Logstash integrates seamlessly with Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Beats, providing a cohesive solution for data ingestion, storage, and visualization.
  • Built-In Plugins
    Logstash has a robust collection of built-in plugins for inputs, codecs, filters, and outputs, minimizing the need for custom development.
  • Scalability
    Logstash can be scaled horizontally by adding more instances, which allows it to handle higher data throughput as your needs grow.
  • Extensibility
    Logstash's plugin architecture allows for custom plugins to be developed, providing flexibility for specific use cases.

Possible disadvantages of logstash

  • Resource Intensive
    Logstash can be quite resource-heavy, consuming significant CPU and memory, which could lead to increased infrastructure costs.
  • Complex Configuration
    The configuration syntax can be complex and sometimes unintuitive, making it challenging for new users to set up and maintain.
  • Latency
    In certain scenarios, Logstash can introduce latency in data processing, which may not be suitable for all real-time applications.
  • Single Point of Failure
    If not properly architected with redundancy, Logstash can become a single point of failure in your data pipeline.
  • Limited Error Handling
    Logstash's error handling is not very robust, which can make it difficult to troubleshoot and resolve issues as they arise.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its powerful features and flexibility, there is a steep learning curve associated with mastering Logstash.

Kafka videos

Franz Kafka - In The Penal Colony BOOK REVIEW

More videos:

  • Review - LITERATURE: Franz Kafka
  • Review - The Trial (Franz Kafka) – Thug Notes Summary & Analysis

logstash videos

Visualizing Logs Using ElasticSearch, Logstash and Kibana

More videos:

  • Review - Security Onion with Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Kafka and logstash)
Log Management
28 28%
72% 72
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Backend Development
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Kafka and logstash

Kafka Reviews

6 Best Kafka Alternatives: 2022’s Must-know List
In this article, you learned about Kafka, its features, and some top Kafka Alternatives. Even though Kafka is widely used, the technology segment has advanced to the point where other options can overshadow Kafka’s cons. There are various options available for choosing a stream processing solution. Organizations are increasingly embracing event-driven architectures powered...
Source: hevodata.com

logstash Reviews

10 Best Open Source ETL Tools for Data Integration
A free and open source ETL tool, Logstash collects data from several sources, performs a transformation process, and sends the output back to your choice of data warehouse. It consists of pre-built filters and more than a hundred plugins to carry out the data process operations. No matter the format or the complexity of data, Logstash dynamically ingests, transforms, and...
Source: testsigma.com
11 Best FREE Open-Source ETL Tools in 2024
Logstash is an Open-Source Data Pipeline that extracts data from multiple data sources and transforms the source data and events and loads them into ElasticSearch, a JSON-based search, and analytics engine. It is part of the ELK Stack. The “E” stands for ElasticSearch and the “K” stands for Kibana, a Data Visualization engine.
Source: hevodata.com
10 Best Linux Monitoring Tools and Software to Improve Server Performance [2022 Comparison]
Lastly, the Elastic Stack (ELK Stack) is a well-known tool for Linux performance monitoring. It’s composed of Elasticsearch (full-text search), Logstash (a log aggregator), Kibana (visualization via graphs and charts), and Beats (lightweight metrics collectors and shippers).
Source: sematext.com
Top 10 Popular Open-Source ETL Tools for 2021
Logstash is an Open-Source Data Pipeline that extracts data from multiple data sources and transforms the source data and events and loads them into ElasticSearch, a JSON-based search, and analytics engine. It is part of the ELK Stack. The “E” stands for ElasticSearch and the “K” stands for Kibana, a Data Visualization engine.
Source: hevodata.com
Top ETL Tools For 2021...And The Case For Saying "No" To ETL
Logstash is an open source data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources simultaneously, transforming the source data and store events into ElasticSearch by default. Logstash is part of an ELK stack. The E stands for Elasticsearch, a JSON-based search and analytics engine, and the K stands for Kibana, which enables data visualization.
Source: blog.panoply.io

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Kafka and logstash, you can also consider the following products

Sentry.io - From error tracking to performance monitoring, developers can see what actually matters, solve quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend.

Fluentd - Fluentd is a cross platform open source data collection solution originally developed at Treasure Data.

Raygun - Raygun gives developers meaningful insights into problems affecting their applications. Discover issues - Understand the problem - Fix things faster.

Splunk - Splunk's operational intelligence platform helps unearth intelligent insights from machine data.

Snare - Snare is well known historically as a leader in the event log space.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.