The Showdown
Confluent Cloudvsredpanda
Why pay monthly fees for Confluent Cloud when you can self-host redpanda for free? Let's look at the facts.
VS
Confluent Cloud
The Expensive Option
- Closed Source (Black box)
- Expensive monthly fees per user
- Data stored on their servers
WINNER
redpanda
The Freedom Choice
- 100% Open Source Code
- Free forever (Self-hosted)
- You own your data completely
Interactive Calculator
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SaaS pricing is designed to scale with your success.
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10 people
150100200+
$
*Estimated standard pricing for Confluent Cloud. Adjust if needed.
Estimated Annual Waste
$1,440
Monthly Burn Rate$120
5-Year Projection$7,200
Cost with Self-Hosted$0
Calculations based on 10 users at $12/mo.
Detailed Breakdown
0
Java (JVM)
C++ (No JVM)
1
ZooKeeper/KRaft
Zero (Single binary)
2
Standard Kafka latency
10x faster tail latency