# Confluent Cloud vs WarpStream

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

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Confluent Cloud | WarpStream |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 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. | $100 a month for the Dev tier, which carries NO uptime SLA, before any per-gibibyte write charge. The first tier with an SLA is Fundamentals at $500. |
| 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. | Two lines, not one. A cluster-tier fee — $100 a month for Dev, $500 for Fundamentals, $1,500 for Pro — plus write throughput metered per gibibyte: $0.01/GiB to 50 TiB, falling to $0.003 beyond 6,250 TiB. Reads, partitions and storage are not billed; data sits in your own object storage. |
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment. | None at all on the $100 Dev tier. 99.9% on Fundamentals, 99.99% on Pro, and 99.999% on Enterprise only with multi-region clusters — 99.99% without. |
| Storage price | $0.08 per GB-month on Basic, Standard and Enterprise alike; $0.03 on Freight, which writes direct to object storage. | Not charged separately. Data is persisted directly to your own object storage, so durability is the object store's bill rather than WarpStream's. |
| 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. | 4,096 on Dev, 16,384 on Fundamentals, 50,000 on Pro and 200,000+ on Enterprise. Partitions are capped by tier and not billed. |

## 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. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- WarpStream: $100 a month for the Dev tier, which carries NO uptime SLA, before any per-gibibyte write charge. The first tier with an SLA is Fundamentals at $500. ([source](https://www.warpstream.com/pricing))

### 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/))
- WarpStream: Two lines, not one. A cluster-tier fee — $100 a month for Dev, $500 for Fundamentals, $1,500 for Pro — plus write throughput metered per gibibyte: $0.01/GiB to 50 TiB, falling to $0.003 beyond 6,250 TiB. Reads, partitions and storage are not billed; data sits in your own object storage. ([source](https://www.warpstream.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/))
- WarpStream: None at all on the $100 Dev tier. 99.9% on Fundamentals, 99.99% on Pro, and 99.999% on Enterprise only with multi-region clusters — 99.99% without. ([source](https://www.warpstream.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/))
- WarpStream: Not charged separately. Data is persisted directly to your own object storage, so durability is the object store's bill rather than WarpStream's. ([source](https://www.warpstream.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/))
- WarpStream: 4,096 on Dev, 16,384 on Fundamentals, 50,000 on Pro and 200,000+ on Enterprise. Partitions are capped by tier and not billed. ([source](https://www.warpstream.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 WarpStream if Write-heavy workloads where inter-zone replication is the bill. Data is acknowledged straight into your own object storage, so partitions, reads and storage are not metered at all and only gigabytes written are — $0.01 falling to $0.003 at volume.

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: WarpStream — You need an availability commitment at the entry price. The $100 Dev tier carries no uptime SLA whatsoever; the first one is Fundamentals at $500, five times the floor. Lower latency is a Pro-tier feature, which is the honest cost of the object-storage design.

## Documented by only one

- Kind of free offer: WarpStream: Free credit
- Credit card to start: WarpStream: No
- 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.
- Throughput ceiling: WarpStream: The calculator runs from 1 MiB/s to 5 GiB/s of uncompressed write throughput, and the rate falls as the tier rises rather than the ceiling being fixed.
- Audit logs: Confluent Cloud: Audit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic.
- Message retention: WarpStream: 7 days on the configuration the pricing calculator shows.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Confluent Cloud or WarpStream?**

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.
WarpStream: $100 a month for the Dev tier, which carries NO uptime SLA, before any per-gibibyte write charge. The first tier with an SLA is Fundamentals at $500.

**Should I choose Confluent Cloud or WarpStream?**

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 WarpStream if Write-heavy workloads where inter-zone replication is the bill. Data is acknowledged straight into your own object storage, so partitions, reads and storage are not metered at all and only gigabytes written are — $0.01 falling to $0.003 at volume.