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

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

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Comparisons	Amazon Kinesis	Kinesis Data Streams
Category	Analytics, Streaming ingestion	Analytics, Streaming
Description	Collect, process, and analyze real-time streaming data to get timely insights and react quickly.	Massively scalable, durable real-time data streaming service for continuous data capture.
Best for	Real-time analytics Log & event data IoT data streams Video streams Clickstream analysis	Real-time data ingestion Log streaming Event sourcing IoT telemetry
Key features	Data Streams Data Firehose Data Analytics Video Streams Serverless scaling	On-demand mode Enhanced fan-out Server-side encryption Data retention up to 365 days Lambda integration
Pricing model	Pay per shard hour + PUT payload units	Pay per shard hour or on-demand per GB
Free tier	Yes	No
Expert take	“Kinesis Data Streams is the AWS-native option for real-time ingestion at scale. Each shard gives you 1 MB/s in and 2 MB/s out. For simpler ETL into S3/Redshift without managing consumers, Data Firehose is zero-administration and auto-scales.” — Oleksii Bebych, 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 Kinesis »	Learn more about Kinesis Data Streams »

When to use Amazon Kinesis or Kinesis Data Streams

Use Amazon Kinesis when:

Real-time analytics
Log & event data
IoT data streams
Video streams
Clickstream analysis

Learn more about Amazon Kinesis »

Use Kinesis Data Streams when:

Real-time data ingestion
Log streaming
Event sourcing
IoT telemetry

Learn more about Kinesis Data Streams »

Next steps with AWS for Analytics

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Collect, process, and analyze real-time streaming data to get timely insights and react quickly.

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Get started with Kinesis Data Streams

Massively scalable, durable real-time data streaming service for continuous data capture.

Go to Kinesis Data Streams

AWS product comparisons

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon RDS?

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database for applications with well-defined access patterns that need consistent single-digit millisecond performance. RDS is a managed relational database for applications that need SQL, joins, and transactional integrity across multiple engines.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.

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