Spark Structured Streaming vs. Kafka Streams was compared. Spark Structured Streaming runs on a Spark cluster and allows reuse of Spark investments, while Kafka Streams is a Java library that provides low latency continuous processing. Both platforms support stateful operations like windows, aggregations and joins. Spark Structured Streaming supports multiple languages but has higher latency due to micro-batching, while Kafka Streams currently only supports Java but provides lower latency continuous processing.