Confluent is a cloud-native platform built on Apache Kafka, designed for real-time data streaming at scale. It serves as a more user-friendly, fully managed alternative to Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK).

Pricing

Confluent offers a usage-based pricing model, starting with a free tier and scaling based on data streaming, storage, and other resources used.

Things To Consider

AWS Alternative

Replaces Amazon MSK by providing a fully managed, enterprise-grade Kafka platform with enhanced features like pre-built connectors, stream processing, and multi-region support.

Comparison with Amazon MSK

Operational Complexity: While Amazon MSK helps reduce some operational burdens, it still requires significant manual intervention for monitoring, scaling, and configuring Kafka clusters. Confluent automates these processes, offering a more developer-friendly platform that reduces the need for Kafka expertise.
Stream Processing: With ksqlDB included, Confluent offers a powerful stream processing engine right out of the box, which isn't available in Amazon MSK without setting up additional services.
Connectors: Confluent’s pre-built connectors for commonly used databases and services simplify integration. Amazon MSK users must typically set up and manage connectors separately, adding complexity and maintenance overhead.

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G2 Ratings: 4.4

Benefits

Confluent greatly reduces the operational complexity of managing Kafka clusters, which is still a challenge with Amazon MSK. It automates many of the manual tasks associated with MSK, such as provisioning, scaling, and monitoring, while adding features that improve developer productivity.