Every category where a model named Apache Pulsar 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
Streaming platforms	Data platform	2%	11 of 78	27%	37	criticized challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Apache Pulsar yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Apache Pulsar across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	2	0	3
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	1	1	3
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	1	1	3
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	1	2	4
Mistral Small	0	1	2	0	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	2	0	2	4
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	1	2	4
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	1	0	2
Kimi K2	0	1	1	1	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	2	1	1	5
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	1	0	2

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

Direct9 labelsNone

Paraphrase1 labelNone

Comparative25 labelsNone

Budget-constrained17 labels4

Scale-constrained18 labelsNone

Negative22 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative92 labels in all, every segment counted; 4 of the 4 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.

“or Apache Pulsar (also open‑source) if you can run them yourself” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Streaming · budget prompt · first choice

“open-source tools like Apache Kafka and Apache Pulsar, which provide powerful functionality without the cost of managed services” Llama 4 Maverick · Streaming · budget prompt · alternative

“Pulsar excels when you need compute/storage separation, multi‑tenancy, or multi‑region support.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Streaming · comparative prompt · alternative

“Choose Pulsar if you need multi-tenancy, geo-replication, or tiered storage built in.” GPT-5.4 mini · Streaming · comparative prompt · alternative

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.

“Unless you are a massive enterprise with strict multi-tenancy needs, steer clear of self-hosting Pulsar.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Streaming · negative prompt · hard negative

“if you have dedicated infrastructure expertise and need full control or multi-region/multi-tenant requirements” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Streaming · direct prompt · soft negative

“Maturity gaps: Weaker exactly-once semantics in some cases, limited messaging features” Grok 4.1 Fast · Streaming · negative prompt · soft negative

“Be Cautious: Apache Pulsar (unless you have a dedicated infrastructure team)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Streaming · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Apache Pulsar, over the 92 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Pulsar was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Apache Kafka81 of 9228Not in the top three

Redpanda71 of 9213Not in the top three

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams65 of 922Not in the top three

Confluent Cloud61 of 9224Not in the top three

Google Cloud Pub/Sub49 of 922Not in the top three

Azure Event Hubs46 of 921Not in the top three

Amazon MSK34 of 925Not in the top three

RabbitMQ20 of 921Not in the top three

Aiven for Apache Kafka17 of 921Not in the top three

NATS JetStream16 of 920Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. 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 Pulsar. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 73 of the 92 answers that named Apache Pulsar and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

devopsschool.com45

guideflow.com40

confluent.io34

automq.com33

gartner.com27

redpanda.com24

risingwave.com22

cotocus.com19

gravitee.io18

bestdevops.com17

279 of the 279 domain citations in answers naming Apache Pulsar came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-event-streaming-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison41

guideflow.com/blog/event-streaming-software39

gartner.com/reviews/market/event-stream-processing26

automq.com/blog/top-10-event-streaming-platforms-confluent-msk-redpanda-alternatives22

cotocus.com/blog/top-10-event-streaming-platforms-features-pros-cons-comparison19

gravitee.io/blog/best-event-streaming-solutions18

blobstreaming.org/notes/event-streaming-platforms-202617

bestdevops.com/top-10-event-streaming-platforms-tools-in-2025-features-pros-cons-compariso16

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Apache Pulsar

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Apache Pulsar; a claim can dispute any of them.

Pulsar 11

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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 Pulsar'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 Pulsar, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at apache.org is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.