Amazon Kinesis vs Azure Event Hubs vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Overview
Real-time data streaming is vital for modern data-driven applications — IoT analytics, clickstream analysis, fraud detection, and ML pipelines all rely on rapid data ingestion and processing. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer robust services to support high-throughput, low-latency streaming data workloads:
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Amazon Kinesis
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Azure Event Hubs
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Google Cloud Pub/Sub
This article delivers an expert Level 500 comparison of architecture, capabilities, use cases, and costs across these services.
Core Capabilities
| Feature | Amazon Kinesis Data Streams / Firehose | Azure Event Hubs | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Use Case | Real-time streaming & analytics | Big data streaming & ingestion | Global pub/sub messaging & streaming |
| Data Model | Streams (shards), Firehose (delivery) | Event stream (partitions) | Topic & subscription model |
| Ordering Guarantees | Per-shard ordering | Partition ordering | Per-subscriber ordering (optional) |
| Message Retention | Up to 365 days (extended retention) | Up to 90 days | 7 days (extended retention in Pub/Sub Lite) |
Architecture & Scalability
| Feature | Amazon Kinesis | Azure Event Hubs | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serverless Option | Yes (Firehose fully managed) | Yes (Event Hubs Standard/Premium) | Yes (fully serverless) |
| Scale & Throughput | 1MB/sec/shard, scales with shards | 1 MB/sec/partition, auto-scaling | Virtually unlimited |
| Global Distribution | Multi-region replication (manual) | Geo DR (Premium), multi-zone HA | Global topic replication built-in |
| Delivery Guarantees | At least once, optional deduplication | At least once | At least once, exactly-once (Lite) |
Advanced Capabilities
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Amazon Kinesis:
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Native Firehose service for automated delivery to S3, Redshift, Splunk, ElasticSearch.
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Fine-grained shard-level scaling.
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Lambda integrations for serverless streaming transformations.
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Deep integration with AWS analytics stack.
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Azure Event Hubs:
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Native integration with Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Data Lake.
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Support for Apache Kafka APIs (Premium).
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Geo-replication, managed disaster recovery.
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Powerful RBAC and VNet integration.
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Google Cloud Pub/Sub:
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Global topic support with multi-region replication.
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Tight integration with Dataflow and BigQuery for analytics pipelines.
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Exactly-once delivery with Pub/Sub Lite.
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Highly cost-optimized for massive-scale messaging.
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Real-world Scenario: IoT Fleet Monitoring
An automotive company needs to process real-time telemetry from millions of connected vehicles worldwide:
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Amazon Kinesis: Ingests high-frequency IoT sensor data, triggers Lambda for event processing, stores data in S3 for long-term analytics.
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Azure Event Hubs: Streams telemetry into Azure Stream Analytics + Power BI dashboards, supporting geo-redundant event storage.
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Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Streams event data globally, triggers Dataflow pipelines for immediate alerting and ML-based predictions in BigQuery.
Performance Metrics
| Metric | Amazon Kinesis | Azure Event Hubs | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max Ingestion Rate | Up to 1 MB/sec/shard (scalable) | Up to 1 MB/sec/partition (scalable) | Unlimited (Pub/Sub) |
| Latency | 70–200 ms | ~200 ms | ~100 ms |
| Max Retention | 365 days (Kinesis Extended) | 90 days | 7 days (or more in Pub/Sub Lite) |
| Integration with Analytics | Yes (Firehose to S3, Redshift) | Yes (Azure Stream Analytics) | Yes (Dataflow, BigQuery) |
Costing Models
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Amazon Kinesis:
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Data Streams: Pay per shard-hour + per PUT payload.
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Firehose: Pay per GB ingested + optional transformation costs.
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Azure Event Hubs:
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Pay per throughput unit + data retention/storage charges.
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Premium tier adds Kafka compatibility and geo DR.
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Google Cloud Pub/Sub:
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Pay per GB of data published & delivered.
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Pub/Sub Lite offers reduced-cost option for very large streams.
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Disclaimer
This article is independently developed and not affiliated with or endorsed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). All service names, prices, and descriptions are based on publicly available sources as of June 2025 and may change.
