Small business▼−4Since September 2026: 7% → 3%, −4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
3%from 7% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 4 → 10 of 84
2 categories · RankedApache Kafka
160Judge labels
11First choices
67Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
2Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
9% in Streaming for enterprise buyers
Rank 3 of 98 in the mid-market standingcriticized challenger
1 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 34% of its 53 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Apache Kafka →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business10 of 88
3%44 labels
criticized challenger
Mid-market3 of 98
7%53 labels
criticized challenger
Enterprise3 of 81
9%47 labels
criticized challenger
In streaming · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Apache Kafka for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming platforms | Data platform | 7% | 3 of 98 | 34% | 53 | criticized challenger | ▼−11Since September 2026: 17% → 6%, −11 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Telemetry pipelines | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 109 of 124 | 40% | 5 | under 10 labels · led by OpenTelemetry Collector at 37% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Apache Kafka moved past the floor in one of two categories: Streaming, −11 points to 6%. It held within the floor in the other one.
Best category · Streaming · by segment
Mid-market▼−11Since September 2026: 17% → 6%, −11 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked.
6%from 17% in September 2026
Cleared the floor by 0 pointsRank 3 of 94, unchanged
Enterprise▼−6Since September 2026: 14% → 9%, −6 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
9%from 14% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 5 pointsRank 2 → 3 of 64
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming | 17% | 6% | ▼−11Since September 2026: 17% → 6%, −11 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked. | Moved past the floor | Rank 3 of 98, unchanged |
| Telemetry pipelines | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 109 of 124, unchanged |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Apache Kafka across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Apache Kafka across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Mistral Small | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct29 labels5
Paraphrase2 labelsNone
Comparative30 labels22not counted in share
Budget-constrained32 labels5
Scale-constrained27 labels1
Negative40 labels5not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative160 labels in all, every segment counted; 11 of the 38 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Apache Kafka remains the undisputed giant... Choose Apache Kafka if you have strong internal engineering talent, need total control over your infrastructure” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Streaming · comparative prompt · first choice
“Apache Kafka – A highly scalable, distributed event streaming platform that is open-source and widely used for real-time data streaming.” Mistral Small · Streaming · budget prompt · first choice
“the de facto standard in event streaming... Choose Kafka if you want the broadest ecosystem and maximum standardization.” GPT-5.4 mini · Streaming · comparative prompt · first choice
“open-source-first options like Apache Kafka / Apache Pulsar that can be self-managed or run as a service on multiple clouds” Muse Glimmer 30B · Streaming · negative prompt · first choice
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Avoid adding Kafka or a custom data lake to the observability path on day one.” GPT-6 Luna · Telemetry pipelines · direct prompt · hard negative
“Do not host raw Apache Kafka on your own EC2/Kubernetes clusters. The operational overhead ... is a massive "ops tax" your company shouldn't pay.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Streaming · scale prompt · soft negative
“Why cautious: High operational complexity (partition management, rebalancing, monitoring—even post-KRaft/ZooKeeper). Steep learning curve” Grok 4.20 · Streaming · negative prompt · soft negative
“managing a dedicated Kafka cluster just to buffer logs adds massive operational overhead, infrastructure costs, and maintenance headaches” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Telemetry pipelines · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Apache Kafka, over the 160 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Kafka was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Apache Kafka, over the 160 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Kafka was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Apache Kafka. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 140 of the 160 answers that named Apache Kafka and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
devopsschool.com70
dacast.com55
redpanda.com53
guideflow.com52
airbyte.com42
confluent.io42
automq.com40
apidog.com37
g2.com37
myhospitalnow.com33
461 of the 461 domain citations in answers naming Apache Kafka came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
apache.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Apache Kafka takes 7% of first choices and Confluent Cloud takes 39%.ShowHide
Search and answers
apache.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Apache Kafka takes 7% of first choices and Confluent Cloud takes 39%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “event streaming platform”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “event streaming platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 8,100 a month (“apache kafka”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 602 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 1,144,025 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 44,247 · 10,306 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 174,267
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
Ads on GoogleDetailLess1 ads · 1 text · 0 shown in the last 30 days
First shown March 2025, as GridGain Systems, verified. 1 more by other advertisers linking to it.
On Google's pages: 1
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
7%
rank 3 of 98 in streaming
Segment leader
39%
Confluent Cloud
- First choices
- 11 across its categories
- Named in
- 160 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 140 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on apache.org
2,858
subdomains included
Content
1,384
counted in the table below
Documentation
375
Product · Integration
16 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| News or press | 1,081 | 12 | 2026-09-03 | ||
| Blog | 228 | 1 | 2026-07-01 | ||
| Template or tool | 38 | undated | |||
| Report or ebook | 14 | undated | |||
| Conference or event | 10 | 0 | 2026-06-09 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 9 | undated | |||
| Case study | 2 | undated | |||
| Webinar or virtual event | 2 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-03Security scanning at foundation scale news or press
- 2026-09-02Asf plus one newsletter august 2026 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation advances open source infrastructure and celebrates community growth in fy26 news or press
- 2026-09-01The apache software foundation announces keynote speakers for community over code glasgow 2026 news or press
- 2026-08-27The apache software foundation announces new top level projects 6 news or press
- 2026-08-18Apache geode 2 0 part iii lessons learned and the path forward news or press
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page apache.org exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Apache Kafka
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Apache Kafka; a claim can dispute any of them.
Kafka 7Apache Kafka (self-managed) 2Apache Kafka & Confluent 1Apache Kafka (Self-Hosted) 1Apache Kafka (Self-Managed or MSK) 1Apache Kafka (Self-Managed) 1Apache Kafka (self-hosted or Aiven) 1Apache Kafka / Confluent Cloud / Amazon MSK 1Apache Kafka/Confluent 1Confluent Cloud / Apache Kafka 1Confluent/Kafka 1Self-Hosted Apache Kafka 1Self-managed Apache Kafka 1
Follow Apache Kafka
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Apache Kafka's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Apache Kafka, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Apache Kafka by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Apache Kafka is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Apache Kafka, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Apache Kafka is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.ShowHide
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Apache Kafka is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideApache Kafka is among the products AI models recommend first in Streaming platforms this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.