# Amazon MSK vs Redpanda

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/aws-msk-vs-redpanda/

Every value below is read from Amazon MSK's and Redpanda's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon MSK | Redpanda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | Serverless bills FIVE dimensions simultaneously: $0.75 per cluster-hour, $0.0015 per partition-hour, $0.10 per GB in, $0.05 per GB out and $0.10 per GB-month stored. Provisioned clusters swap the first two for a per-broker hourly rate. Nothing here is a single number. | Not published. The pricing page names two tiers, Serverless and Bring Your Own Cloud, and states throughput, partition and SLA ceilings for each — but no rate, no unit and no monthly figure appears anywhere on it. Serverless is described as pay-as-you-go or annual commit; BYOC as annual commitment only. |
| Throughput ceiling | 200 Mbps ingress and 400 Mbps egress per Serverless cluster, throttled rather than refused. That is 25 MB/s in — a quarter of what Redpanda Serverless states, once the units are read. | 100 MB/s write and 300 MB/s read on Serverless; 2 GB/s write and 4 GB/s read on Bring Your Own Cloud — a twentyfold step between the two tiers. |
| Partition limit | 2,400 partition leaders per Serverless cluster for non-compacted topics, and 120 for compacted ones. Partitions are metered as well as capped — $0.0015 per partition-hour, so 2,400 of them cost about $2.65 a day carrying no traffic. | 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- Amazon MSK: Serverless bills FIVE dimensions simultaneously: $0.75 per cluster-hour, $0.0015 per partition-hour, $0.10 per GB in, $0.05 per GB out and $0.10 per GB-month stored. Provisioned clusters swap the first two for a per-broker hourly rate. Nothing here is a single number. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonMSK/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Redpanda: Not published. The pricing page names two tiers, Serverless and Bring Your Own Cloud, and states throughput, partition and SLA ceilings for each — but no rate, no unit and no monthly figure appears anywhere on it. Serverless is described as pay-as-you-go or annual commit; BYOC as annual commitment only. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### Throughput ceiling

- Amazon MSK: 200 Mbps ingress and 400 Mbps egress per Serverless cluster, throttled rather than refused. That is 25 MB/s in — a quarter of what Redpanda Serverless states, once the units are read. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/msk/latest/developerguide/limits.html))
- Redpanda: 100 MB/s write and 300 MB/s read on Serverless; 2 GB/s write and 4 GB/s read on Bring Your Own Cloud — a twentyfold step between the two tiers. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### Partition limit

- Amazon MSK: 2,400 partition leaders per Serverless cluster for non-compacted topics, and 120 for compacted ones. Partitions are metered as well as capped — $0.0015 per partition-hour, so 2,400 of them cost about $2.65 a day carrying no traffic. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/msk/latest/developerguide/limits.html))
- Redpanda: 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Amazon MSK if You are already on AWS and want Kafka inside the same IAM, the same VPC and the same bill. Serverless scales partitions for you and states no maximum retention at all, which nothing else here offers.

Pick Redpanda if Knowing the ceilings before you talk to anyone. It publishes throughput, partitions and SLA for both tiers — 100 MB/s and 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 2 GB/s and 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud — which is more capability detail than the others put on a pricing page at all.

Consider something else: Amazon MSK — You want to predict the bill. Five meters run at once and the floor is $0.75 per cluster-hour — about $547 a month before a byte moves. Ingress costs twice egress, the reverse of most of this corpus, and the 2,400-partition ceiling costs about $2.65 a day carrying no traffic.

Consider something else: Redpanda — You need to know what it costs. The pricing page carries no currency figure anywhere: not a rate, not a plan fee, not a starting-from. Every comparison here is on capability alone. RBAC, OIDC and audit logging are also BYOC-only, and BYOC is annual commitment.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Redpanda: Yes
- Credit card to start: Redpanda: No
- Entry paid plan: Amazon MSK: $0.75 per cluster-hour on Serverless — about $547 a month for a cluster that has moved no data at all, before partitions, transfer or storage are counted.
- Egress over allowance: Amazon MSK: $0.05 per GB out and $0.10 per GB in on Serverless. Ingress costs twice egress here, which is the reverse of most of this site's corpus.
- Uptime SLA: Redpanda: 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud.
- Storage price: Amazon MSK: $0.10 per GB-month on Serverless.
- SAML single sign-on: Redpanda: Limited
- Audit logs: Redpanda: Audit logging arrives on Bring Your Own Cloud. Serverless lists Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub and no audit trail.
- Maximum message size: Amazon MSK: 8 MiB on Serverless. A larger message fails outright with INVALID_REQUEST rather than being throttled.
- Message retention: Amazon MSK: Unlimited. Serverless states no maximum retention duration, where WarpStream's published configuration is seven days.
- Role-based access control: Redpanda: Serverless offers Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub only. Role-based access control, audit logging and OIDC arrive on Bring Your Own Cloud.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Should I choose Amazon MSK or Redpanda?**

Pick Amazon MSK if You are already on AWS and want Kafka inside the same IAM, the same VPC and the same bill. Serverless scales partitions for you and states no maximum retention at all, which nothing else here offers.
Pick Redpanda if Knowing the ceilings before you talk to anyone. It publishes throughput, partitions and SLA for both tiers — 100 MB/s and 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 2 GB/s and 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud — which is more capability detail than the others put on a pricing page at all.