Amazon Kinesis Firehose
Amazon Kinesis Firehose
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose API auto-buffers and delivers streaming data to S3/Redshift/OpenSearch/Splunk — no code required.
Truly zero ops (unlike Kinesis Data Streams which requires shard management)
Minimum buffer time (60s) — not truly real-time
CreateDeliveryStream — specify destination (S3/Redshift/OpenSearch/Splunk). PutRecord / PutRecordBatch to write data.
Uptime · 30-day window
GitHub activity
About this API
Firehose is AWS's "ready-to-use" option for streaming data pipelines. The distinction from Kinesis Data Streams is key: Data Streams is the underlying streaming platform (manage shards, consumers, checkpoints) for custom stream processing; Firehose is a managed delivery service that only pushes data to fixed destinations (S3, Redshift, OpenSearch, Splunk, custom HTTP endpoint) per buffer rules. Most common use: "logs/events → Firehose → S3 data lake" — applications write JSON events to Firehose, which auto-buffers 5 minutes or 5MB (whichever comes first) then writes a file to S3, time-partitioned. With Lambda transform, also runs ETL before delivery (filter, enrich, format change). Fully zero-ops — best choice for "I have lots of small events to centralize in S3 without writing consumers".
What you can build
- 1Stream logs to S3 data lake
- 2Land real-time events in Redshift for analytics
- 3Write app metrics to OpenSearch for visualization
- 4Centralized archival of CloudTrail/VPC Flow Logs
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Truly zero ops (unlike Kinesis Data Streams which requires shard management)
- Auto-buffer + bulk write to downstream
- Built-in Lambda transformation support
- Pay by data volume
Limitations
- Minimum buffer time (60s) — not truly real-time
- No consumer re-read (data is gone after delivery)
Getting started
CreateDeliveryStream — specify destination (S3/Redshift/OpenSearch/Splunk). PutRecord / PutRecordBatch to write data.
FAQ
Firehose vs. Kinesis Data Streams?+
Just need data in S3/Redshift/OpenSearch: Firehose. Need custom real-time processing: Data Streams.
Can it do true real-time (<1s)?+
No — Firehose minimum buffer is 60s. For sub-second, use Kinesis Data Streams + Lambda.
Technical details
- Auth type
- unknown
- Pricing
- unknown
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- python, javascript, go, java, csharp
- Response time
- 42 ms
- Last health check
- 6/26/2026, 6:22:16 AM
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