Apache Kafka Pricing
Starting price
$0/month
Pricing model
Paid
Free tier
Yes
Free trial
Yes
Plans
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka (Self-hosted) | $0 | month | Full features; Self-managed; No vendor lock-in |
| Confluent Cloud Free | $0 | month | $400 free credits; Basic features; 4096 partitions |
| Confluent Cloud Pay-as-you-go | $0 | month | ~$1/GB for small use; eCKUs auto-scale; 99.99% SLA |
Figures are the vendor's published prices. Unknown values show as “—”. Price-history tracking is not yet available for this tool. Price verified 2026-10-01. Last updated 2026-10-08.
True cost
True cost calculator
| Plan | Listed | Seat basis | Monthly · 5 seats | Annual · 5 seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka (Self-hosted) | $0/month | flat | $0 | $0 |
| Confluent Cloud Free | $0/month | flat | $0 | $0 |
| Confluent Cloud Pay-as-you-go | $0/month | flat | $0 | $0 |
Estimate from published prices. Per-seat plans scale with seats; flat plans don't; plans with included seats charge the base until you exceed them, then add the per-seat overage where published. Monthly/annual come from each plan's billing period. Taxes and add-ons excluded.
Apache Kafka's starting price ($0) is 100% below the Data & Databases average of $1608.