Databases · pricing
Apache Kafka pricing
Apache Kafka publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the databases tools listed alongside it.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
Apache Kafka plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where Apache Kafka stops being free
Apache Kafka, Free
- Full platform
- Kafka Connect
- Kafka Streams
- No broker or throughput limits
No paid tier on record
Apache Kafka lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Apache Kafka feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Durable commit log
- Horizontal scale
- Kafka Connect
- Kafka Streams
- Replication
- Low latency
People bring Apache Kafka in for moving events between services without point-to-point coupling, feeding analytics and warehouses from operational systems in near real time, replaying history to rebuild state after a consumer bug, buffering bursty producers ahead of slower downstream systems. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Apache Kafka are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Databases
Too few databases tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | |
| Apache Solr | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Apache Kafka |
| NATS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Apache Kafka |
| Redpanda | Free | Source-available community edition with paid enterprise and cloud tiers | - | vs Apache Kafka |
| OpenSearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs Apache Kafka |
| RabbitMQ | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs Apache Kafka |
| Meilisearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed cloud billed separately | - | vs Apache Kafka |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Apache Kafka badges page.
Before you pay for Apache Kafka
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Apache Kafka runs on linux, windows, macos, self-hosted, docker, and is published by Apache Software Foundation of Wilmington, Delaware, United States. The full record is on the Apache Kafka review, and the rest of the category is under best databases tools.
Apache Kafka pricing questions
- How much does Apache Kafka cost?
- Apache Kafka publishes a single tier, Apache Kafka, at Free.
- Does Apache Kafka have a free plan?
- Yes. The Apache Kafka tier costs nothing and covers full platform, kafka connect, kafka streams.
- Which databases tools can I use without paying?
- 8 of the 8 databases tools listed alongside Apache Kafka have a free tier: Apache Solr, NATS, Redpanda, OpenSearch, RabbitMQ.
- What am I actually paying for with Apache Kafka?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for moving events between services without point-to-point coupling, feeding analytics and warehouses from operational systems in near real time, replaying history to rebuild state after a consumer bug.
- Does Apache Kafka charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Apache Kafka prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Apache Kafka against before paying?
- The closest databases tools in this directory are Apache Solr, NATS, Redpanda, OpenSearch. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Apache Kafka covering price, platforms and features.