Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a cloud-based, serverless service for capturing, processing, and analyzing live data streams.
What Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a cloud-based, serverless service for capturing, processing, and analyzing live data streams. It can continuously ingest gigabytes of data per second from hundreds of thousands of sources, with streaming data available to multiple real-time analytics applications, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, or AWS Lambda within 70 milliseconds of collection. Data is synchronously replicated across three Availability Zones in an AWS Region. A stream can serve up to 20 consumers with dedicated read throughput, and data retention can be configured for up to 365 days. The service supports server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service keys and private access through Amazon VPC. It integrates with services including DynamoDB, Aurora, Lambda, and CloudWatch, and can deliver records to Amazon S3. Use cases include log and event streaming, real-time analytics, event-driven applications, and real-time AI and machine-learning applications. Access it through the API or web; it is paid, has no AWS Free Tier availability, and pricing starts at $0.03.
Good
- Handles gigabytes of data per second.
- Data can be available within 70 milliseconds.
- Supports up to 365 days of retention.
- Up to 20 consumers get dedicated read throughput.
- Supports several AWS integrations and client languages.
Watch out
- No AWS Free Tier availability.
- Paid service; pricing starts at $0.03.
- Security responsibilities are shared with AWS.
Who it suits
It suits teams building cloud applications that need to capture and process streaming data for analytics, event-driven workflows, or AI and machine-learning applications. Its integrations and supported client languages may help teams building around AWS services.
Verdict
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams offers real-time ingestion, processing, and integrations for streaming-data applications. Check the paid pricing model and shared security responsibilities against your needs.
Plans and prices
From Amazon Kinesis Data Streams's own pricing page, checked 1 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| On-demand Advantage | — | $0.032/GB ingested in US-East · $0.016/GB retrieved in US-East · 25 MB/s minimum ingested and retrieved at account level · no fixed stream-hour charge · retention up to 365 days · pay per GB written and read with account-level minimum usage |
| On-demand Standard | — | $0.08/GB ingested in US-East · $0.040/GB retrieved in US-East · $0.040 per stream-hour in US-East · 24-hour retention included · optional retention up to 365 days · pay per GB written and read plus per-stream hourly charge |
| Provisioned mode | — | 1 MB/s write or 1,000 records/s per shard · 2 MB/s read per shard · 25 KB PUT payload units · 24-hour default retention · retention up to 365 days · pay per shard-hour, PUT payload units, and optional features |
The facts
Each one read from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Availability
- Streaming data is synchronously replicated across three Availability Zones in an AWS Region.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Consumer fan-out
- A Kinesis data stream can have up to 20 consumers, each with dedicated read throughput.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Data delivery
- Kinesis Data Streams can deliver records directly to Amazon S3 Tables as Apache Iceberg tables and to general-purpose Amazon S3 buckets in source format.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Getting started
- Users can create a stream through the AWS Management Console or CreateStream API, configure producers, and build applications to read and process records.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- AWS lists integrations with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, AWS Database Migration Service, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Lambda, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, and Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Latency
- Streaming data can be made available to multiple real-time analytics applications, Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink, or AWS Lambda within 70 milliseconds of collection.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Retention
- Kinesis Data Streams supports retention for up to 365 days.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Scale
- It can continuously capture gigabytes of data per second from hundreds of thousands of sources.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Security
- The service supports server-side encryption with AWS Key Management Service keys and private access through Amazon VPC.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Security model
- AWS states that security is a shared responsibility and provides guidance for data protection, IAM access control, compliance validation, resilience, and infrastructure security.checked 1 Oct 2026
- Use cases
- AWS describes use cases including log and event streaming, real-time analytics, event-driven applications, and real-time AI and machine-learning applications.checked 1 Oct 2026
- What it does
- Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a serverless, real-time data streaming service for capturing, processing, and analyzing data streams at any scale.checked 1 Oct 2026
Money
- Free tier
- Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is not currently available in the AWS Free Tier.checked 1 Oct 2026
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