Aiven for Apache Kafka vs. Ably Realtime

Aiven for Apache Kafka® is a fully managed distributed event streaming service, that can be deployed in the cloud of your choice. Aiven for Apache Kafka is ideal for event-driven applications, near-real-time data transfer and data pipelines, streaming analytics, and any use case that requires moving huge amounts of real-time data between applications and systems. With Aiven for Apache Kafka you can set up fully managed Kafka clusters in less than 10 minutes — using the Aiven web console or programmatically via Aiven’s API, CLI, Terraform provider or Kubernetes operator.

Ably helps teams deliver resilient AI UX and high-performance live experiences that stay fast and in sync worldwide. We provide the global realtime layer for AI agents, chat, notifications, live dashboards, and collaboration - engineered to handle peak demand without self-managed infrastructure. Teams like HubSpot and Intercom use Ably to avoid the cost and complexity of building and operating realtime systems, while still getting predictable performance at serious scale, handling 2T+ API operations per month.