# Confluent Cloud vs Redpanda

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/confluent-cloud-vs-redpanda/

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Confluent Cloud | Redpanda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Pricing model | 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. | 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. |
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment. | 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud. |
| Audit logs | Audit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic. | Audit logging arrives on Bring Your Own Cloud. Serverless lists Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub and no audit trail. |
| Partition limit | 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. | 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud. |

## Where they differ

### 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. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- 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))

### Uptime SLA

- Confluent Cloud: 99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- Redpanda: 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- Redpanda: 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### Audit logs

- Confluent Cloud: Audit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- Redpanda: Audit logging arrives on Bring Your Own Cloud. Serverless lists Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub and no audit trail. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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 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: 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.

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: 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Throughput ceiling: 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.
- SAML single sign-on: Redpanda: Limited
- 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 Confluent Cloud or Redpanda?**

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 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.