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Confluent Cloud vs Amazon MSK

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Updated 10 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Confluent Cloud if…

The reference implementation, and the one that shows its working. Three meters are each published with a rate, and the page states they are pre-replication — a disclosure the others skip entirely. Standard at about $385 a month is the cheapest 99.99% SLA in this category.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

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

Consider something else if…

  • Confluent Cloud: Your traffic is write-heavy and you are counting cents. Three meters compound: eCKU-hours accrue whether or not you publish, data in and out is $0.05 a gigabyte on Basic, and storage is $0.08 per gigabyte-month on every tier below Freight.
  • 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.

5 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Confluent Cloud documentationVisit Amazon MSK documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionConfluent CloudAmazon MSK
Pricing
Entry paid plan
Basic gives the first eCKU free and charges $0.14 per eCKU-hour after it, so a small cluster starts near zero. Standard, the first tier with a 99.99% SLA, starts at about $385 a month.
$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.
Pricing modelThree meters running together. Compute is billed per eCKU-hour — an elastic Confluent Kafka Unit that autoscales — data in and out is billed per GB, and data at rest per GB-month. The rates are published pre-replication, so a replicated topic costs a multiple of the figure shown.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.
Egress over allowance
$0.05 per GB in or out on Basic, falling to $0.014–$0.030 on Freight. Ingress and egress are charged at the same rate rather than separately.
$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.
Storage
Storage price
$0.08 per GB-month on Basic, Standard and Enterprise alike; $0.03 on Freight, which writes direct to object storage.
$0.10 per GB-month on Serverless.
Streaming
Partition limitNo figure is published. Enterprise advertises "enhanced partition limits" over Standard without saying what either limit is, so the ceiling cannot be compared with a vendor that states one.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.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Entry paid plan

Confluent Cloud
Basic gives the first eCKU free and charges $0.14 per eCKU-hour after it, so a small cluster starts near zero. Standard, the first tier with a 99.99% SLA, starts at about $385 a month.
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.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Confluent Cloud
Three meters running together. Compute is billed per eCKU-hour — an elastic Confluent Kafka Unit that autoscales — data in and out is billed per GB, and data at rest per GB-month. The rates are published pre-replication, so a replicated topic costs a multiple of the figure shown.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • Confluent Cloud Pricing ↗

    “eCKU ($/eCKU-hour) first eCKU free, then $0.14 $0.75 $1.75 - $2.25 $2.25 (minimum 2 eCKUs) data in/out (ingress/egress) ($/GB) $0.05 $0.035 - $0.050 $0.020 - $0.050 $0.014 - $0.030 data stored ($/GB-month) $0.08 $0.08 $0.08 $0.03 prices shown are pre-replication.”

    Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing

  • 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

Egress over allowance

Confluent Cloud
$0.05 per GB in or out on Basic, falling to $0.014–$0.030 on Freight. Ingress and egress are charged at the same rate rather than separately.
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.
Sources (2) →

Storage price

Confluent Cloud
$0.08 per GB-month on Basic, Standard and Enterprise alike; $0.03 on Freight, which writes direct to object storage.
Amazon MSK
$0.10 per GB-month on Serverless.
Sources (2) →

Partition limit

Confluent Cloud
No figure is published. Enterprise advertises "enhanced partition limits" over Standard without saying what either limit is, so the ceiling cannot be compared with a vendor that states one.
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.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

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.

Uptime SLAConfluent Cloud: 99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment.
Throughput ceilingAmazon 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.
Audit logsConfluent Cloud: Audit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic.
Maximum message sizeAmazon MSK: 8 MiB on Serverless. A larger message fails outright with INVALID_REQUEST rather than being throttled.
Message retentionAmazon MSK: Unlimited. Serverless states no maximum retention duration, where WarpStream's published configuration is seven days.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Confluent Cloud or Amazon MSK?

Confluent Cloud: Basic gives the first eCKU free and charges $0.14 per eCKU-hour after it, so a small cluster starts near zero. Standard, the first tier with a 99.99% SLA, starts at about $385 a month.

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: Confluent Cloud or Amazon MSK?

Confluent Cloud: $0.05 per GB in or out on Basic, falling to $0.014–$0.030 on Freight. Ingress and egress are charged at the same rate rather than separately.

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.

Should I choose Confluent Cloud or Amazon MSK?

Pick Confluent Cloud if The reference implementation, and the one that shows its working. Three meters are each published with a rate, and the page states they are pre-replication — a disclosure the others skip entirely. Standard at about $385 a month is the cheapest 99.99% SLA in this category.

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.

Provider pages

Confluent CloudManaged Kafka from its original authors, billed on three meters at once — compute units by the hour, data moved by the gigabyte and data kept by the gigabyte-month.Amazon MSKManaged Kafka on AWS, whose serverless tier meters five separate dimensions at once — cluster-hours, partition-hours, data in, data out and storage.

Related comparisons

Amazon MSK vs RedpandaAmazon MSK vs WarpStreamConfluent Cloud vs RedpandaConfluent Cloud vs WarpStreamWarpStream vs Redpanda

Every page here is sourced and dated.