Detailed comparison across 10 dimensions
Winner: Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka clearly comes out ahead of Confluent Cloud on Staquest's weighted six-dimension score. Apache Kafka has a free tier; Confluent Cloud does not.
| Overview | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | saas tool | hybrid |
| Company | Confluent | Apache Software Foundation |
| Free Tier | ||
| Has API | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Trending | Stable | Stable |
| Industries | Data & AnalyticsDevelopmentLegal & ComplianceMedia & EntertainmentSaaS & Cloud | Data & AnalyticsDevelopmentMedia & EntertainmentSales & CRM |
| Categories | data-engineering | data-engineering |
| Website | Visit | Visit |
Apache Kafka
usage based
open source
| Feature | confluent-cloud | apache-kafka |
|---|---|---|
| Connect: Throughput And Task Base Price | ||
| Distributed Event Streaming | ||
| Govern: Environment-Based Billing | ||
| Fault-Tolerant | ||
| Process: Apache Flink (Cfus) | ||
| High Throughput | ||
| Stream: Kafka Clusters (Eckus/Ckus, Networking, Storage) | ||
| Low Latency | ||
| Scalable |
Showing 9 of 9 features
Dashes mean the feature isn't listed in our data. The tool may still support it.
On Staquest's weighted six-dimension scoring, Apache Kafka comes out ahead overall, though Confluent Cloud can be the better fit depending on your priorities — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown above.
Apache Kafka offers a free tier; Confluent Cloud does not currently list one.
Apache Kafka is open source. The feature comparison and dimension scores above cover the full breakdown.
