# WarpStream vs Redpanda

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/warpstream-vs-redpanda/

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | WarpStream | Redpanda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Credit card to start | No | No |
| Pricing model | 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. | 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 | 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. | 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud. |
| Throughput ceiling | 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. | 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 | 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. | 5,000 partitions on Serverless, 112,500 on Bring Your Own Cloud. |

## Where they differ

### Pricing model

- 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))
- 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

- 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))
- Redpanda: 99.9% on Serverless, 99.99% on Bring Your Own Cloud. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://www.warpstream.com/pricing))
- 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. ([source](https://www.redpanda.com/pricing))

### Partition limit

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

## Which should you choose?

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.

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: 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.

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
- Kind of free offer: WarpStream: Free credit
- Entry paid plan: 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.
- Storage price: 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.
- SAML single sign-on: Redpanda: Limited
- Audit logs: Redpanda: Audit logging arrives on Bring Your Own Cloud. Serverless lists Kafka ACLs and SSO with Google or GitHub and no audit trail.
- Message retention: WarpStream: 7 days on the configuration the pricing calculator shows.
- 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 WarpStream or Redpanda?**

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.
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.