Apache Kafka®
A better approach to managed Kafka
Get complete control in any cloud with Aiven for Apache Kafka's fully managed, enterprise-grade streaming service.
99.99% SLA
50+ connectors
Runs on any cloud
Includes $300 in free credits
Trusted by developers at
Aiven for Kafka: A Head to Head Comparison
Aiven for Apache Kafka is designed from the ground up to deliver transparency, automation, and seamless integration across any cloud. Built to avoid the operational overhead, vendor lock-in, and unpredictable costs of proprietary platforms like Confluent.
Feature | Aiven | Confluent | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
Predictable TCO | Aiven's pricing provides clear and predictable costs, allowing for accurate budget forecasting and a lower Total Cost of Ownership. | ||
Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) | Aiven offers a true Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) model, giving organizations the best control over their cloud environment, data residency, and security posture. Complete freedom to deploy Kafka in any public cloud with multi-cloud approach that ensures you're never locked into a single provider. | ||
Commitment to Open Source | Aiven is built on 100% open-source technologies and actively contributes to the community, giving customers the freedom and flexibility to avoid vendor lock-in. Not just Kafka, but Kafka's entire open-source ecosystem - Connect, MirrorMaker 2, Schema Registry, and all essential components in one unified platform. | ||
Powered by Diskless Kafka | Aiven offers Open Source Diskless Kafka topics for BYOC customers that can cut your cross AZ data replication costs by as much as 80%. Confluent’s Diskless Offering is proprietary and only available at cluster level without the flexibility of both low latency and diskless topics in the same cluster. | ||
Optimised Provisioning | Aiven delivers opinionated Kafka with all the capabilities you love - legendary performance, retention, and replay. Pick throughput, retention, and replication tiers and click go. Get a secure, properly-sized cluster in seconds. | ||
Scalable Growth | Aiven's architecture and transparent pricing model are designed to support cost-effective growth, allowing businesses to scale their operations seamlessly and affordably. | ||
All-Inclusive Pricing | Aiven's all-inclusive pricing model bundles networking and other costs into a single, transparent price, simplifying budget management and eliminating surprise fees. | ||
Unified Open Source Platform | Aiven provides a unified platform where the best open-source services like PostgreSQL and OpenSearch can be easily integrated, creating a powerful and flexible data ecosystem. | ||
Open Data Governance | Aiven empowers customers with open data governance by supporting and contributing to open-source tools like Klaw, ensuring control over data policies without proprietary constraints. |
Enjoy high availability even with the smallest plan
Startup
- 3 dedicated VMs
- 1 CPU per VM
- 2-4 GB RAM per VM
- 90 GB total cluster storage
starting from
$200/month
$0.27/hour
Business
- 3 dedicated VMs
- 1-8 CPU per VM
- 4-32 GB RAM per VM
- 600-18432 GB total cluster storage
- Everything in Startup, plus support for Kafka Connect in the same cluster
Add-ons
Tiered StorageStarting from $0.00012 per GB/hour
starting from
$500/month
$0.69/hour
Premium
- 6-30 dedicated VMs
- 2-8 CPU per VM
- 8-32 GB RAM per VM
- 2250-184320 GB total cluster storage
- Everything in Business, plus more compute and storage capacity
Add-ons
Tiered StorageStarting from $0.00012 per GB/hour
starting from
$1,900/month
$2.60/hour
Need help? Use our Pricing Calculator to get a recommended plan based on your unique data needs and requirements.
Data retention is only limited by storage, with the exception of Free plan. For information about annual discount or plan capacity beyond the listed plans, please contact us
Network & Data Transfer
Networking is metered based on consumption. For accounts on classic plans, usage is included whilst meeting our fair usage policy to ensure platform stability.
For high-volume streaming requirements or to view current network rates, please contact Sales.
Why choose Aiven for Kafka
Built on 100% open-source Kafka, Aiven eliminates complexity, reduces cost, and offers the flexibility modern teams need to scale quickly without lock-in.
And, unlike proprietary platforms that add operational overhead, vendor lock-in, and unpredictable costs, Aiven is designed from the ground up to deliver transparency, automation, and seamless integration across your cloud environment.
Simplified Operations
Automatic updates and upgrades. Zero stress. Fully managed Kafka reduces engineering effort, allowing teams to focus on innovation.
Mature Ecosystem
An ecosystem allowing schema management, enterprise integration, and data
synchronization.
Cost Optimization
Predictable pricing, efficient resource allocation, and BYOC help control expenses and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
Aiven’s Committed to Open Source
Aiven not only offers Open Source we also contribute to the community by making key features available and sustainable, like tiered storage.
Enterprise Reliability
99.99% uptime SLA, automated failover, and self-healing infrastructure ensure business continuity with dedicated, experienced support staff.
Streamlined Solutions
Easily integrate Kafka with any of our other services, like ClickHouse or OpenSearch, for a single pane of glass, simplifying your platform and data operations.
How our customers use Apache Kafka
Aiven’s customers unlock major cloud savings and full control with it's BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) model.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Both platforms provide out-of-the-box monitoring. Aiven provides a Grafana-based monitoring screen for all plans, offering metrics dashboards and easy integration with external monitoring tools like Datadog or Prometheus. Confluent's managed service features the Confluent Control Center for platform-wide monitoring, with integrations for other systems.
This is a key differentiator. Aiven is built on a 100% open-source foundation. We provide Karapace, our open-source alternative to Confluent's Schema Registry and Kafka REST proxy.Confluent changed the license for some of its platform components (like Schema Registry and certain connectors) from the open-source Apache 2.0 license to the proprietary Confluent Community License. This license restricts users from "making available any software-as-a-service... that competes with Confluent." With Aiven, you get a fully open-source data platform without vendor lock-in or proprietary licenses.
The best choice depends on your team's priorities.
- Choose a managed service like Aiven or Confluent if you want to free your developers from managing infrastructure. This allows your team to focus on building applications, not managing clusters, while benefiting from a 99.99% uptime SLA.
- Aiven is ideal if you prioritize transparent, all-inclusive pricing (including networking), a data platform with 10+ open-source services (not just Kafka), and a commitment to 100% open-source components.
Yes. Aiven supports flexible migration strategies, including a hybrid-cloud model. You can use Aiven's migration services to move non-confidential data streams to the cloud while keeping highly confidential data on your existing on-premises environment. This allows you to modernize at your own pace while ensuring compliance with any local data regulations.
Ready to See the Difference?
Let us show you how Aiven for Kafka can reduce your costs, boost flexibility, and simplify your architecture—without locking you in.