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Confluent Cloud pricing and limits

iScore66–87 · ≈#1/4
www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud · Event streaming
SEPT 2026 audit

Managed 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.

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Entry paid planBasic 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.
CategoryEvent streaming

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 10 criteria comparedSources last checked

Confluent Cloud pricing at a glance

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 source ↗
Pricing model
Three meters running together source ↗
Egress over allowance
$0.05 per GB in or out on Basic, falling to $0.014–$0.030 on Freight source ↗

First line of each sourced value. The full text is in Confluent Cloud pricing below.

01.Evaluation guide

Who it suits

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.

Consider something else if…

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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Each value below links to the page it was read from, with the sentence it came from. Criteria Confluent Cloud does not publish are not listed.

Confluent Cloud pricing

3 criteria
Entry paid planBasic 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.
Sources (1) →
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.
Sources (1) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

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.
Sources (1) →

Infrastructure

1 criteria
Uptime SLA99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment.
Sources (1) →

Storage

1 criteria
Storage price$0.08 per GB-month on Basic, Standard and Enterprise alike; $0.03 on Freight, which writes direct to object storage.
Sources (1) →

Auth

1 criteria
Audit logsAudit logs arrive on Standard, the first paid tier above Basic.
Sources (1) →

Streaming

1 criteria
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.
Sources (1) →

Compliance

3 criteria
SOC 2Security is built in, with enterprise-grade features and compliance certifications including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.
Sources (1) →
ISO 27001Security is built in, with enterprise-grade features and compliance certifications including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.
Sources (1) →
PCI DSSSecurity is built in, with enterprise-grade features and compliance certifications including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS.
Sources (1) →

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

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Confluent Cloud in the news

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Selected by a search on this company, refreshed weekly. Nobody here has verified these claims — where something material is confirmed, it is written into the page above with its source, the way every other fact on this site is.

Confluent Cloud pricing questions

How much does Confluent Cloud cost?

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.

Confluent Cloud Pricing · read

How does Confluent Cloud charge?

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.

Confluent Cloud Pricing · read

How much does Confluent Cloud charge for egress?

$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.

Confluent Cloud Pricing · read

What uptime does Confluent Cloud guarantee?

99.99% on Standard and above. Basic carries no uptime commitment.

Confluent Cloud Pricing · read

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.