# Confluent Cloud vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Confluent Cloud

| Attribute | Confluent Cloud | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 90.5 (72% (medium)) | 53.4 (49% (low)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | Confluent Cloud is a fully managed Apache Kafka service enabling organizations to stream high-volume, low-latency events between systems in real-time. It eliminates operational overhead through automatic scaling, multi-region replication, and costs significantly less than self-managed Kafka deployments. | A cloud-based publish/subscribe messaging system that enables applications to ingest and stream event data at scale with guaranteed delivery, automatic scaling, and built-in replay capabilities. Integrates with data warehouses and stream processing pipelines for real-time analytics. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"cloud","ordering":"per_partition","paradigm":"pubsub","protocol":"Kafka protocol, REST API","message_replay":true,"persistent_log":true,"consumer_groups":true,"geo_replication":true,"kafka_compatible":true,"managed_offering":true,"stream_processing":true,"horizontal_scaling":true}` | `{"hosting":"cloud","ordering":"per_key","paradigm":"pubsub","message_replay":true,"persistent_log":true,"consumer_groups":true,"geo_replication":true,"managed_offering":true,"stream_processing":true,"delivery_guarantee":"at_least_once","horizontal_scaling":true}` |
| integrations.count | 130 | 3 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Salesforce"},{"name":"Google Ads"},{"name":"Google Analytics"},{"name":"Hotjar"},{"name":"Quickbooks"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"Apache Flink"},{"name":"Schema Registry"},{"name":"Apache Iceberg"},{"name":"Delta Lake"}]` | `[{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"Cloud Storage"},{"name":"Dataflow"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US","GB"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Basic","summary":"Free tier with $400 credit for 30 days","description":"Getting started with data streaming","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Standard","summary":"Pay-as-you-go","features":["infinite storage","audit logs","20%+ throughput savings"],"description":"Production-ready data streaming with advanced features","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Pay-as-you-go","features":["private networking","autoscaling to GBps+ throughput","32%+ throughput savings"],"description":"Mission-critical workloads with maximum scale and security","contactSales":false}],"summary":"Usage-based pay-as-you-go pricing with free tier option","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.confluent.io/fr-fr/pricing/cost-estimator/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T08:33:56.886Z","freeTrialDays":30,"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Standard Pub/Sub","summary":"$40/TiB throughput + $0.27/GiB-month storage (first 10 GiB throughput free)","features":["At-least-once message delivery","Per-key message ordering","Pull and push delivery modes","Cross-zone replication","Automatic scaling and provisioning","Message retention and snapshots"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":40,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GiB-month"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.27,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Pay-as-you-go pricing based on message throughput and retention","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"free_throughput":"10 GiB/month"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"BigQuery Subscription","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":50,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Cloud Storage Subscription","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":50,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Kinesis Data Streams Import","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":50,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Other Source Imports (Azure Event Hubs, AWS MSK, Confluent Cloud)","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"TiB"},"kind":"metered","amount":80,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"Usage-based: $40/TiB throughput, $0.27/GiB-month storage. Free tier: 10 GiB/month throughput.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://cloud.google.com/pubsub","retrievedAt":"2026-08-05T13:22:58.268Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.27,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| reliability.sla_pct | 99.99 | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |

## Capabilities (Message Queues)

| Capability | Confluent Cloud | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Messaging paradigm | Pub/sub | Pub/sub |
| **Correctness** |  |  |
| Delivery guarantee | - | At-least-once |
| Ordering guarantee | Per-partition | Per-key |
| **Durability** |  |  |
| Durable replayable log | ✓ | ✓ |
| Message replay / rewind | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Interop** |  |  |
| Wire protocol | Kafka protocol, REST API | - |
| Kafka-protocol compatible | ✓ | - |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Partitioned horizontal scaling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Geo / cross-region replication | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Consumption** |  |  |
| Consumer groups / competing consumers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dead-letter queue | - | - |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Managed cloud offering exists | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud only |
| **Processing** |  |  |
| Built-in stream processing | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T14:39:08.742Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*