Question 1

What's the difference between a Streaming Service and a message queue?

Accepted Answer

A message queue is usually designed for task distribution: messages are typically processed once and then removed, often with a single consumer (or competing consumers). A streaming service is designed for continuous event streams where multiple independent consumers can read the same events, often with replay (reading past events again) and ordering within partitions. Streaming is a better fit for analytics, telemetry, and event-driven architectures where many systems need the same data.

Question 2

When should I use a Streaming Service?

Accepted Answer

Use a streaming service when you have continuous data (clicks, logs, IoT telemetry, transactions) and you need near-real-time processing, multiple downstream consumers, or the ability to replay events. It’s a strong choice for anomaly detection, real-time dashboards, fraud detection, operational monitoring, and event-driven microservices. If you only need simple background job processing with one consumer, a queue may be simpler.

Question 3

How much does a Streaming Service cost?

Accepted Answer

Costs usually depend on (1) data volume ingested and delivered (GB in/out), (2) throughput capacity (partitions/shards or throughput units), (3) retention duration (how long events are stored for replay), and (4) number of consumers and cross-region/network egress. Managed services may also charge for enhanced features like schema registry, private networking, or dedicated capacity. To estimate accurately, start with events per second, average event size, required retention, and peak vs. average traffic.

Streaming Service

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