Confluent Cloud vs Redpanda
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Confluent Cloud and Redpanda built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
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 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…
- 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.
- 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.
4 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.
Confluent Cloud 0
Redpanda 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Confluent Cloud | Redpanda |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| 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. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment. | 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud. |
| Auth | ||
| 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. |
| Streaming | ||
| 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.
- 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 ↓
- 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
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“Pay as you go, or Annual Commit plan”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
Uptime SLA
99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment.
99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Confluent Cloud Pricing ↗
“everything in basic high availability with 99.99% uptime SLA infinite storage audit logs to detect security threats”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“99.9% SLA Public networking or private networking (AWS) [...] 99.99% SLA Public or private networking Intelligent tiered storage”
Read 2026-09-16 · official 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.
- Redpanda
- 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Confluent Cloud Pricing ↗
“everything in basic and standard private networking gbps+ autoscaling enhanced partition limits”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“5000 partitions [...] 112,500 partitions”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
Audit logs
- Confluent Cloud
- Audit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic.
- Redpanda
- Audit logging arrives on Bring Your Own Cloud. Serverless lists Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub and no audit trail.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Confluent Cloud Pricing ↗
“high availability with 99.99% uptime SLA infinite storage audit logs to detect security threats”
Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing
- Redpanda Pricing ↗
“SSO (Google, GitHub, OIDC), role-based access control (RBAC), audit logs”
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 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.