Amazon MSK vs Redpanda
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Amazon MSK and Redpanda built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- 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.
- 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.
3 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Amazon MSK 0
Redpanda 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Amazon MSK | Redpanda |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| 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. |
| Streaming | ||
| 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Price List — Amazon MSK, US East (N. Virginia) ↗
“$0.75 per cluster-hour for serverless cluster in US East (N. Virginia) [...] $0.0015 per partition-hour for serverless cluster in US East (N. Virginia) [...] $0.10 per GB data in for serverless cluster in US East (N. Virginia)”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“Pay as you go, or Annual Commit plan”
Read 2026-09-16 · official 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon MSK quota — Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka ↗
“maximum ingress throughput 200 mbps slowdown with throttle duration in response maximum egress throughput 400 mbps slowdown with throttle duration in response”
Read 2026-09-16 · official docs
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“100 MB/s max write throughput 300 MB/s max read throughput [...] 2 GB/s max write throughput 4 GB/s max read throughput”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon MSK quota — Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka ↗
“maximum number of partitions (leaders) 2400 for non-compacted topics. 120 for compacted topics.”
Read 2026-09-16 · official docs
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“5000 partitions [...] 112,500 partitions”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
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.