Dec 10, 2025

Data Infrastructure For All

Introducing Free Tier for Apache Kafka® and $5 Developer Tiers.

Cassio Sampaio
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Cassio leads Product and Engineering, leveraging deep expertise in developer tools and enterprise SaaS. Formerly a strategic advisor to the company, he now focuses on accelerating Aiven's growth and realizing its technical vision.

Hello everyone,

I want to spend a moment talking about the reality of building software today.

We often talk about "Strategy" and "Vision," but as I have written before, Execution >> Strategy. The problem is that for many developers, execution hits a wall before it even begins.

The friction to start building has become too high.

We read articles about “forward deployed engineers”, but the reality for the individual builder often feels different. Building modern applications requires gluing together complex infrastructure.

To do that today, you are often forced to make architectural compromises based on your credit card limit rather than your technical needs. You are forced to rely on "Free Tiers" that are actually traps; time-limited sandboxes that expire just as you are getting started, or "toy" versions that break the moment you try to scale.

This is a tax on curiosity. And quite frankly, it sucks.

Walking the Talk

At Aiven, we are built on Open Source. It is in our DNA. But we cannot simply extract value from the ecosystem; we must reinvest in it.

We believe that the best way to support the "Builder" (whether you are a student, an indie hacker, or a technical lead prototyping or running a skunkworks project inside a Fortune 500) is to give you the best tools without the friction.

We decided to stop optimizing for "conversion funnels" and start optimizing for your time to code.

Data Infrastructure For All

I am incredibly excited to announce a big push in how we support the developer community.

We are launching:

Free Tier for Aiven for Apache Kafka®: This is not a trial. This is a fully managed, no-strings-attached Kafka service. It is designed to let you build real event-driven architectures without needing a budget approval.
$5 Developer Tier for Aiven for PostgreSQL® & Aiven for MySQL: We are bringing you the exact same reliability, automation, and ecosystem that our enterprise customers rely on, but at a price point that fits a hobbyist project.

This means you can spin up a scalable Postgres database for the price of a coffee, and start an event driven architecture with Kafka for free (and don't forget, we also have Free Tiers for Postgres and MySQL).

Go build something

There is no sales call. There is no "Contact Us" form to get started.

We want to see what you build when the friction is removed. We want to see your "Hello World" turn into the next big thing.

You can get started right now.

Time to build 🦀 🚀

Cassio Sampaio

CPTO, Aiven

Table of contents

Walking the Talk
Data Infrastructure For All
Go build something

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Walking the Talk

At Aiven, we are built on Open Source. It is in our DNA. But we cannot simply extract value from the ecosystem; we must reinvest in it.

We decided to stop optimizing for "conversion funnels" and start optimizing for your time to code.

Data Infrastructure For All

I am incredibly excited to announce a big push in how we support the developer community.

We are launching:

Free Tier for Aiven for Apache Kafka®: This is not a trial. This is a fully managed, no-strings-attached Kafka service. It is designed to let you build real event-driven architectures without needing a budget approval.

$5 Developer Tier for Aiven for PostgreSQL® & Aiven for MySQL: We are bringing you the exact same reliability, automation, and ecosystem that our enterprise customers rely on, but at a price point that fits a hobbyist project.