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Create an Aiven for Apache Kafka® Professional tier service

Create an Aiven for Apache Kafka® Professional tier service on Aiven Cloud. Choose the deployment location and configuration for your workload.

To create a Free or Developer tier service, see:

To run Kafka in your own cloud account, see Create an Apache Kafka® service with BYOC.

Prerequisites​

  • Access to the Aiven Console
  • An Aiven project where you can create Kafka services

Create a Professional tier service on Aiven Cloud​

  1. In the Aiven Console, open the project and click Services.

  2. Click Create service.

  3. Click Apache Kafka®.

  4. In Service tier, click Professional.

  5. In Deployment mode, click Aiven cloud.

  6. If Service type appears, click Standard or Classic:

    • Standard: Usage-based pricing, with classic and diskless topics.
    • Classic: A predefined service plan and classic topics.

    You cannot change the service type after you create the service.

    note

    Accounts created after August 2026 create Standard Kafka services. Service type appears only for accounts created before August 2026.

  7. In Cloud, click a cloud provider and region.

  1. In Average ingress, click your expected average ingress rate.

    Aiven uses this value to estimate compute demand and assumes egress is 3x ingress. If you click Custom, enter your expected average ingress rate.

  2. If Cost optimization appears, set the estimated share of traffic in diskless topics.

    This section appears when you click 10 MB/s or Custom. The slider previews the estimated network cost for different shares of diskless topic traffic. It does not change the service configuration.

  3. In Retention, click a default topic retention period.

    Aiven uses this value for the storage estimate. If you click Custom, enter a period between 1 and 30 days.

  4. In Service basics, enter a Name. You cannot change the name after you create the service.

  5. Optional: Click Add tag to this service to add resource tags.

  6. In Service summary, review the estimated monthly cost.

  7. Click Create service.

  8. Wait until the service status is Running.

Review the cost estimate​

The estimate includes compute, storage, and network usage. It is based on the selected cloud, region, expected traffic, and retention.

The estimated monthly cost is based on your selected configuration. Your invoice reflects actual usage during the billing period.

After the service is Running, open Overview > Service usage to view ingress, egress, and storage usage.

For more information, see Pricing for Aiven for Apache Kafka®.

Create a service with the Aiven CLI​

In the Aiven CLI and advanced configuration, Standard Kafka is identified as inkless.

  1. List the Standard Kafka offerings available for the project:

    avn inkless offering list \
      --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
      --project PROJECT_NAME

    The command returns the available offerings and their maximum ingress and egress throughput.

  2. Optional: Filter offerings by required ingress throughput:

    avn inkless offering list \
      --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
      --project PROJECT_NAME \
      --ingress REQUIRED_MBPS

  3. View pricing rates for the available offerings:

    avn inkless offering rates \
      --organization-id ORGANIZATION_ID \
      --project PROJECT_NAME \
      --cloud-provider CLOUD_PROVIDER

    Optional: Filter rates by offering with --offering-name OFFERING_NAME or by region with --cloud-name CLOUD_NAME.

  4. Create the service using an offering as the plan:

    avn service create SERVICE_NAME \
      --project PROJECT_NAME \
      --service-type kafka \
      --cloud CLOUD_REGION \
      --plan OFFERING_NAME \
      -c kafka_version=4.1 \
      -c tiered_storage.enabled=true \
      -c inkless.enabled=true

  5. Optional: To enable diskless topics when you create the service, also set:

    -c kafka_diskless.enabled=true

    You can also enable diskless topics later in the service configuration.

Replace the following:

  • ORGANIZATION_ID: organization ID that owns the project
  • PROJECT_NAME: Aiven project name
  • REQUIRED_MBPS: minimum ingress throughput in megabits per second
  • CLOUD_PROVIDER: cloud provider for rate listings: aws, google, or azure
  • CLOUD_NAME: cloud or region identifier returned by the rates listing
  • CLOUD_REGION: cloud region for the service, such as aws-us-east-1
  • OFFERING_NAME: Standard Kafka offering returned by avn inkless offering list
  • SERVICE_NAME: name of the Kafka service

Create a Classic Kafka service with Terraform​

Terraform examples apply to Classic Kafka services.

  1. Create a file named provider.tf and add the following:

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  2. Create a file named service.tf and add the following:

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  3. Create a file named variables.tf and add the following:

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  4. Create a terraform.tfvars file and add the values for your token and project name.

  5. Optional: To output connection details, create a file named output.tf and add the following:

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To apply your Terraform configuration:

  1. Initialize Terraform by running:

    terraform init

    The output is similar to the following:


    Initializing the backend...

    Initializing provider plugins...
    - Finding aiven/aiven versions matching ">= 4.0.0, < 5.0.0"...
    - Installing aiven/aiven v4.9.2...
    - Installed aiven/aiven v4.9.2
    ...
    Terraform has been successfully initialized!
    ...

  2. To create an execution plan and preview the changes, run:

    terraform plan

  3. To deploy your changes, run:

    terraform apply --auto-approve

Next steps​

Related pages