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Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud vs Redpanda comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Confluent Cloud's Kafka offers cost-effective scalability and reliability, enhancing data processing and schema management despite higher costs.
Sentiment score
3.5
Users experience high ROI from Redpanda due to cost savings, operational efficiency, easy setup, and enhanced investment experience.
Returns depend on the application you deploy and the amount of benefits you are getting, which depends on how many applications you are deploying, what are the sorts of applications, and what are the requirements.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment and personal gains since I started using Redpanda.
Senior Software Engineer at Prestatech
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Apache Kafka support on Confluent Cloud is praised for timely and competent assistance, with high user satisfaction ratings.
Sentiment score
4.9
Redpanda's customer service is valued for its knowledgeable support, useful community, and helpful resources during onboarding processes.
I was getting prompt responses, and it was nicely handled regarding the support.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate them eight if 10 was the best and one was the worst.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Redpanda has really amazing customer support based on my experience and from what I have read.
Senior Software Engineer at Prestatech
Not the technical support as in the usual way, but the community and the development support was great.
Software Engineer
The AWS team is also supporting us at any point.
SDE-2 at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.8
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is scalable and flexible, though some users report reliability issues when scaling.
Sentiment score
6.6
Redpanda is highly scalable, praised for efficient storage and container compatibility, with minor concerns about data retention and complexity.
According to me, it is quite scalable in terms of all the data it can handle and stream.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it ten out of ten for scalability.
Co Founder & CEO at SaYukth Private Limited
We never scaled horizontally by adding one machine, then two machines, then three machines, and so forth.
Software Analyst at CLSA
It is properly scalable and you can simply put it on a Kubernetes Pod or Docker Swarm and scale horizontally or vertically.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is stable and reliable, with occasional issues in high traffic and dashboard access.
Sentiment score
8.5
Redpanda is considered highly stable by users, effectively handling workloads with high reliability, consistency, and minimal issues.
Redpanda is very stable.
SDE-2 at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
I do not know about systems with ten thousand microservices and how they would react in that situation, but in our system where the latency and the throughput were way more important with less amount of things integrated with Redpanda, it was fine.
Software Engineer
I would rate it around eight or nine.
Software Analyst at CLSA
 

Room For Improvement

Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud needs improvements in integrations, user interface, cost, monitoring, and configuration for enhanced functionality.
Redpanda requires better documentation, clustering, hardware support, and improved tools for integration, debugging, and connector options.
If it were easier to configure clusters and had more straightforward configuration, high-level API abstraction in the APIs could improve it.
Partner at SouJava
Regarding additional improvements, I would say probably around error handling, where when we encounter errors specific to our response structures and everything, or the tables or anything of that nature, it would be better if we were prompted with better error handling mechanisms.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Observability and monitoring are areas that could be enhanced.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It needs better modern hardware with a better CPU, not just a normal CPU. A server-grade CPU is required.
Co Founder & CEO at SaYukth Private Limited
The biggest scalability improvement could be the retention.
Data Engineer at Datacrop
I think for the connectors, they are still young, so they need to enhance the connectors with anything such as MongoDB, cloud, big data, Elasticsearch, Datadog, Splunk, MySQL, databases, SGBDR, flat file, anything.
Middleware Tech Lead at MQnovaTool
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users of Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud find pricing accessible but warn of potential cost surges with added features.
Redpanda provides a cost-effective alternative to Kafka, offering free versions and straightforward setup, with paid support options.
I thought Confluent would stop me when I crossed the credits, but it did not, and then I got charged.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In terms of pricing, Redpanda is free.
Co Founder & CEO at SaYukth Private Limited
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Redpanda is that it is straightforward with fast deployment.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud enables scalable, efficient real-time data processing with seamless platform integration and advanced management features.
Redpanda provides high performance and Kafka compatibility with low resource consumption, benefiting developers with efficient scaling and configuration.
These features are important due to scalability and resiliency.
Chief Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The Kafka Streams API helps with real-time data transformations and aggregations.
Partner at SouJava
The best features Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud offers would be the connection with various external systems through various languages such as Python and C#.
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Redpanda has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to move from a batch approach to a more streaming approach for our jobs, which cuts down on our delivery time and allows us to better meet our SLAs for our clients.
Senior Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
This is excellent for streaming data and it is faster than most alternatives, and without JVM, which is beneficial.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The command-line interface and the UI have made my work easier by allowing me to deal with topics or with configurations really easily, issuing commands.
Senior Software Engineer at Prestatech
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Kafka on Confluent C...
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redpanda
Ranking in Streaming Analytics
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Streaming Analytics category, the mindshare of Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redpanda is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Redpanda2.0%
Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud1.0%
Other97.0%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

AF
Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has unified log streams from multiple systems and accelerated issue tracking through streamlined setup
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to detect if there is any variable or if there is any data structure that is mismatched, as it would be easier than us manually having to put in the exact name in order for it to match the response. Regarding additional improvements, I would say probably around error handling, where when we encounter errors specific to our response structures and everything, or the tables or anything of that nature, it would be better if we were prompted with better error handling mechanisms. I do not think there are any other improvements Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud needs, aside from error handling and response structures.
ArpitShah - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Analyst at CLSA
Event streaming has simplified video data cleanup and now powers real-time analytics
One area for improvement is providing more examples. For instance, Redpanda could be more useful as a sink where you get the data and can directly push to S3. While this is possible through the API, there are better and faster ways to do it. You can make a million API calls and accomplish the task in one and a half hours, but the same thing can be done in ten minutes through other methods. These faster approaches are not documented in obvious places. You have to find information scattered across various blogs. Redpanda should collect all the good blogs and best practices and put them in their documentation. This is more about knowledge management and making it easy for users to understand the product for complex use cases. For simple use cases, it is straightforward. We all use the basic pipe functionality. However, providing more examples would be useful. For example, integration with AWS and the AWS ecosystem would be cool.
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909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I think Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud can be improved by probably working more around Confluent or the tool. In my opinion, it should utilize the response structures in a better way or be able to...
What is your primary use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
I have used Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud for one of my projects with regard to log monitoring. My main use case for Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud in that project was mainly streaming of the lo...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud?
My advice to others looking into using Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud is that it is easier and has a low learning curve. If there is any use case regarding streaming, I would suggest starting off ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redpanda?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Redpanda, I am exploring the product. If I am convinced about the product and the capabilities, and I am sure I will be because I...
What needs improvement with Redpanda?
Redpanda can be improved in several ways, and the more I experiment with the product, the more limitations I find. I understand that this is about business, and the product should grow, and they ha...
What is your primary use case for Redpanda?
My main use case for Redpanda is primarily for streaming, and I am currently focusing on building data lakehouses because I find them really interesting. Redpanda fits into my data lakehouse setup ...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud vs. Redpanda and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.