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What's the Difference Between Amazon Data Firehose and Kinesis Data Streams?

Compare Amazon Data Firehose and Kinesis Data Streams side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

Compare side-by-side

Comparisons
Amazon Data Firehose
Kinesis Data Streams
Category

Analytics, Streaming

Analytics, Streaming
Description

Reliably load real-time streaming data into data lakes, warehouses, and analytics services.

Massively scalable, durable real-time data streaming service for continuous data capture.
Best for
  • Log delivery
  • Streaming ETL
  • Real-time analytics
  • IoT data delivery
  • Real-time data ingestion
  • Log streaming
  • Event sourcing
  • IoT telemetry
Key features
  • Automatic scaling
  • Data transformation
  • Format conversion
  • Compression
  • Multiple destinations
  • On-demand mode
  • Enhanced fan-out
  • Server-side encryption
  • Data retention up to 365 days
  • Lambda integration
Pricing model

Pay per GB of data ingested

Pay per shard hour or on-demand per GB
Free tier

No

No
Expert take

“Firehose is the zero-admin way to load streaming data into S3, Redshift, or OpenSearch. It handles batching, compression, and encryption without writing consumer code.”
— Didier Durand, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]

“Data Streams gives you full control over shard management and consumer logic. Use it when you need custom processing with the Kinesis Client Library or Lambda.”
— Oleksii Bebych, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page

Learn more about Amazon Data Firehose »

Learn more about Amazon Kinesis Data Streams »

When to use Amazon Data Firehose or Amazon Kinesis Data Streams

Use Amazon Data Firehose when:

  • Log delivery
  • Streaming ETL
  • Real-time analytics
  • IoT data delivery

Learn more about Amazon Data Firehose »

Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams when:

  • Real-time data ingestion
  • Log streaming
  • Event sourcing
  • IoT telemetry

Learn more about Amazon Kinesis Data Streams »

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