Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Workato VS Apache Kafka

Compare Workato VS Apache Kafka and see what are their differences

Workato logo Workato

Experts agree - we're the leader. Forrester Research names Workato a Leader in iPaaS for Dynamic Integration. Get the report. Gartner recognizes Workato as a “Cool Vendor in Social Software and Collaboration”.

Apache Kafka logo Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source message broker project developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala.
  • Workato Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16
  • Apache Kafka Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-01

Workato

$ Details
-
Release Date
2013 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Alexey Timanovskiy
Employees
250 - 499

Workato features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Workato offers a user-friendly interface with low-code/no-code capabilities, making it accessible for non-technical users to build and manage automated workflows.
  • Extensive Integrations
    The platform supports a wide range of integrations with major applications and services, allowing businesses to connect disparate systems and streamline processes.
  • Scalability
    Workato can handle large-scale automation projects, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Advanced Features
    The platform includes advanced functionalities like AI, machine learning, and natural language processing, which can enhance complex workflows.
  • Security
    Workato ensures robust security features, including data encryption and compliance with various industry standards, which is crucial for protecting sensitive information.

Possible disadvantages of Workato

  • Cost
    Workato can be relatively expensive compared to other automation tools, which might deter small businesses or individuals with limited budgets.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While the basic features are easy to use, mastering the more advanced functionalities may require significant time and effort.
  • Complex Pricing Structure
    The pricing model can be complex and may not be straightforward for new users to understand, potentially leading to unexpected costs.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users have reported occasional performance issues, such as slow execution times for tasks, especially when dealing with large volumes of data.
  • Limited Custom Scripting
    Although it supports a wide range of integrations, there's limited flexibility for custom scripting compared to other more developer-focused platforms.

Apache Kafka features and specs

  • High Throughput
    Kafka is capable of handling thousands of messages per second due to its distributed architecture, making it suitable for applications that require high throughput.
  • Scalability
    Kafka can easily scale horizontally by adding more brokers to a cluster, making it highly scalable to serve increased loads.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Kafka has built-in replication, ensuring that data is replicated across multiple brokers, providing fault tolerance and high availability.
  • Durability
    Kafka ensures data durability by writing data to disk, which can be replicated to other nodes, ensuring data is not lost even if a broker fails.
  • Real-time Processing
    Kafka supports real-time data streaming, enabling applications to process and react to data as it arrives.
  • Decoupling of Systems
    Kafka acts as a buffer and decouples the production and consumption of messages, allowing independent scaling and management of producers and consumers.
  • Wide Ecosystem
    The Kafka ecosystem includes various tools and connectors such as Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, and KSQL, which enrich the functionality of Kafka.
  • Strong Community Support
    Kafka has strong community support and extensive documentation, making it easier for developers to find help and resources.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Kafka

  • Complex Setup and Management
    Kafka's distributed nature can make initial setup and ongoing management complex, requiring expert knowledge and significant administrative effort.
  • Operational Overhead
    Running Kafka clusters involves additional operational overhead, including hardware provisioning, monitoring, tuning, and scaling.
  • Latency Sensitivity
    Despite its high throughput, Kafka may experience increased latency in certain scenarios, especially when configured for high durability and consistency.
  • Learning Curve
    The concepts and architecture of Kafka can be difficult for new users to grasp, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Hardware Intensive
    Kafka's performance characteristics often require dedicated and powerful hardware, which can be costly to procure and maintain.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing Kafka's dependencies and ensuring compatibility between versions of Kafka, Zookeeper, and other ecosystem tools can be challenging.
  • Limited Support for Small Messages
    Kafka is optimized for large throughput and can be inefficient for applications that require handling a lot of small messages, where overhead can become significant.
  • Operational Complexity for Small Teams
    Smaller teams might find the operational complexity and maintenance burden of Kafka difficult to manage without a dedicated operations or DevOps team.

Workato videos

Webinar Series by Workato | Introduction to Workato (Main)

More videos:

  • Review - Workato Product Updates - February 2020
  • Review - Vijay Tella, Workato CEO: Welcome to the New Era of Automation

Apache Kafka videos

Apache Kafka Tutorial | What is Apache Kafka? | Kafka Tutorial for Beginners | Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Apache Kafka - Getting Started - Kafka Multi-node Cluster - Review Properties
  • Review - 4. Apache Kafka Fundamentals | Confluent Fundamentals for Apache Kafka®
  • Review - Apache Kafka in 6 minutes
  • Review - Apache Kafka Explained (Comprehensive Overview)
  • Review - 2. Motivations and Customer Use Cases | Apache Kafka Fundamentals

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Workato and Apache Kafka)
Data Integration
45 45%
55% 55
Stream Processing
0 0%
100% 100
Web Service Automation
58 58%
42% 42
API Tools
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 Workato and Apache Kafka

Workato Reviews

Top MuleSoft Alternatives for ITSM Leaders in 2025
In recent years, MuleSoft has expanded its focus into process automation, offering robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent document processing (IDP) functionality. These areas bring MuleSoft’s service offering closer to broad, intelligent automation platforms like Workato and UiPath but away from an integration service vendor.
Source: www.oneio.cloud
The Best MuleSoft Alternatives [2024]
Workato is an integration solution that uses recipes — a set of pre-made instructions — to control how systems interact with each other.
Source: exalate.com
Top 15 MuleSoft Competitors and Alternatives
Workato is a leader in enterprise automation that provides a no-code platform for automating business workflows. In Aug 2022, Workato was named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list. The company serves over 17,000 brands, including Broadcom, Intuit, and Box. [5]
Top 9 MuleSoft Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
From ticketing systems and monitoring tools to cloud services and databases, Workato seamlessly integrates with a wide range of applications. This ensures smooth information flow across your IT ecosystem. By leveraging Workato, you can focus on strategic initiatives, enhance service delivery, and achieve operational excellence.
Source: www.zluri.com
7 Best Zapier Alternatives to Meet Your Integration Needs
Zapier’s pricing, while high, is more justifiable than Workato’s. Workato doesn’t make its pricing information public to begin with. Workato compels the buyers to go through its sales and demo process to give them custom pricing.

Apache Kafka Reviews

Best ETL Tools: A Curated List
Debezium is an open-source Change Data Capture (CDC) tool that originated from RedHat. It leverages Apache Kafka and Kafka Connect to enable real-time data replication from databases. Debezium was partly inspired by Martin Kleppmann’s "Turning the Database Inside Out" concept, which emphasized the power of the CDC for modern data pipelines.
Source: estuary.dev
Best message queue for cloud-native apps
If you take the time to sort out the history of message queues, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. Most of the currently popular message queues were born around 2010. For example, Apache Kafka was born at LinkedIn in 2010, Derek Collison developed Nats in 2010, and Apache Pulsar was born at Yahoo in 2012. What is the reason for this?
Source: docs.vanus.ai
Are Free, Open-Source Message Queues Right For You?
Apache Kafka is a highly scalable and robust messaging queue system designed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. It's ideal for real-time data streaming and processing, providing high throughput for publishing and subscribing to records or messages. Kafka is typically used in scenarios that require real-time analytics and monitoring, IoT applications,...
Source: blog.iron.io
10 Best Open Source ETL Tools for Data Integration
It is difficult to anticipate the exact demand for open-source tools in 2023 because it depends on various factors and emerging trends. However, open-source solutions such as Kubernetes for container orchestration, TensorFlow for machine learning, Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming, and Prometheus for monitoring and observability are expected to grow in prominence in...
Source: testsigma.com
11 Best FREE Open-Source ETL Tools in 2024
Apache Kafka is an Open-Source Data Streaming Tool written in Scala and Java. It publishes and subscribes to a stream of records in a fault-tolerant manner and provides a unified, high-throughput, and low-latency platform to manage data.
Source: hevodata.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Kafka seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 142 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Workato mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Workato yet. Tracking of Workato recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Apache Kafka mentions (142)

View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Zapier - Connect the apps you use everyday to automate your work and be more productive. 1000+ apps and easy integrations - get started in minutes.

RabbitMQ - RabbitMQ is an open source message broker software.

Boomi - The #1 Integration Cloud - Build Integrations anytime, anywhere with no coding required using Dell Boomi's industry leading iPaaS platform.

Apache ActiveMQ - Apache ActiveMQ is an open source messaging and integration patterns server.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform - Anypoint Platform is a unified, highly productive, hybrid integration platform that creates an application network of apps, data and devices with API-led connectivity.

StatCounter - StatCounter is a simple but powerful real-time web analytics service that helps you track, analyse and understand your visitors so you can make good decisions to become more successful online.