Confluent Cloud
A fully managed, serverless cloud platform for Apache Kafka enabling real-time data streaming, processing, and integration at any scale
- Vendor
- Confluent, Inc.
- Also known as
- confluent-cloud
Available worldwide · Popular in: US, GB
What is Confluent Cloud?
Confluent Cloud is a managed Kafka service that automates infrastructure management and scaling across multiple cloud providers. It combines Kafka for streaming data with integrated Apache Flink for stream processing, providing enterprise-grade security, hundreds of pre-built connectors, and usage-based pricing with no upfront capacity provisioning required.
Confluent Cloud pricing
Plans, per-tier features and add-ons, dated and linked to live pricing. Pricing changes often; always verify at source before you rely on it.
Free tier available. Pay-as-you-go usage pricing ($0.14-2.25/eCKU-hour depending on tier, $0.035-0.050/GB networking, $0.03-0.08/GB-month storage). Annual commitments available with tiered discounts. $400 free credits for new users over 4 months.
Free
FreeServerless, fully managed clusters with zero ops
- connectors
- 80+ fully managed
- uptime_sla
- 99.9% (1 eCKU), 99.99% (2+ eCKUs)
- Autoscaling
- Kafka ACLs
- Data encryption
- Audit logs
- RBAC
- Multicloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Standard
High availability with 99.99% uptime SLA and audit logging
- uptime_sla
- 99.99%
- Autoscaling at scale
- Advanced governance
- Audit logs
- SAML/SSO
- RBAC
- Self-managed encryption keys
Enterprise
Mission-critical use cases with GBps+ scale and advanced security
- scale
- GBps+
- uptime_sla
- 99.99%
- GBps+ autoscaling
- Private networking
- Client-side field-level encryption
- Advanced monitoring
- All security features
Add-ons
- Premium Support10% per first_50k_usage + 8% per next_50k_usage + 6% per next_900k_usage + 3% per usage_over_1m
- Business Support$1000/mo
What Confluent Cloud does
The capabilities that matter for message queues, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Messaging paradigm
- Pub/sub
- Delivery guarantee
- Exactly-once
- Ordering guarantee
- Per-partition
- Durable replayable log
- ✓
- Message replay / rewind
- ✓
- Wire protocol
- Kafka protocol, REST API
- Kafka-protocol compatible
- ✓
- Partitioned horizontal scaling
- ✓
- Geo / cross-region replication
- ✓
- Consumer groups / competing consumers
- ✓
- Dead-letter queue
- -
- Managed cloud offering exists
- ✓
- Hosting
- Cloud only
- Built-in stream processing
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- CLI
- Web
- Cloud / SaaS
Integrations (16)
Independently observed- Slack•
- Amazon S3→•
- AWS S3→•
- Google Cloud Storage→•
- Azure Blob Storage→•
- Elasticsearch→•
- Salesforce
- Google Ads
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- Quickbooks
- MySQL
- Apache Flink
- Schema Registry
- Apache Iceberg
- Delta Lake
Security & compliance
Independently observed- SOC 1active
- SOC 2active
- SOC 3active
- ISO 27001active
- ISO 27701active
- PCI DSSactive
- HITRUST CSFactive
Confluent Cloud FAQ
Common questions about Confluent Cloud, answered from independent, dated evidence.
What is Confluent Cloud?
A managed cloud service for real-time data streaming built on Apache Kafka, offering automatic scaling, security controls, and pre-built connectors without requiring manual cluster management. It is indexed under Message Queues.
Is Confluent Cloud free?
Confluent Cloud offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans start at $0.75. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.
What platforms does Confluent Cloud support?
Confluent Cloud supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.
Can Confluent Cloud be self-hosted?
We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Confluent Cloud, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.
What does Confluent Cloud integrate with?
We have confirmed 12 integrations for Confluent Cloud, including Salesforce, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Hotjar, Quickbooks, MySQL, Apache Flink and Schema Registry, plus 4 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.
What security certifications does Confluent Cloud have?
We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR for Confluent Cloud. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Confluent Cloud not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.
Source: https://www.confluent.io/de-de/compliance/uk-tax-strategy/
Confluent Cloud alternatives
Other message queues we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- WarpStreamA Kafka-compatible streaming platform that significantly reduces costs and operational complexity by storing data in object storage instead of local disksmedium · 73%
- TemporalA platform for building reliable, long-running applications with automatic state management and fault tolerance.high · 76%
- NATSlow · 47%
- RabbitMQA unified messaging and streaming broker for distributed application communicationlow · 47%
- RedpandaA fast, developer-friendly streaming data platform that works with Apache Kafka without ZooKeeper or Javamedium · 59%
- Trigger.devAn open-source platform for building durable AI agents with built-in task scheduling and streamingmedium · 73%
Compare Confluent Cloud
Side by side against other message queues, attribute by attribute, with a source on every value.
The vioscaleAI score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Confluent Cloud, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 100 | 0.16 | 15.6 | ✓ |
| Security posture | 100 | 0.12 | 11.5 | ✓ |
| Pricing transparency | 100 | 0.06 | 6.3 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 92 | 0.05 | 4.7 | ✓ |
| Price level | 80 | 0.04 | 3.4 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 60 | 0.05 | 2.9 | ✓ |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Content
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Faq | 6 items | mediumsource · 2026-09-10 · 62% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | Hosting: cloud · Ordering: per_partition · Paradigm: pubsub · Protocol: Kafka protocol, REST API · Message replay: Yes · Persistent log: Yes | mediumsource · 2026-09-18 · 60% |
Integrations
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Count | 120 | mediumsource · 2026-09-18 · 60% |
Market
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | HqCountry: US · PrimaryMarkets: … · AvailabilityScope: global · AvailableCountries: … · NotAvailableCountries: … | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
Pricing
Reliability
Security
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Fedramp | Yes | highsource · 2026-08-14 · 75% |
| Gdpr | Yes | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
| Hipaa | Yes | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
| Iso27001 | Yes | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
| Pci | Yes | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
| Soc2 | Yes | highsource · 2026-09-18 · 75% |
| Certifications | SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, PCI DSS +1 more | mediumsource · 2026-09-18 · 60% |
| Disclosure policy | Yes | mediumsource · 2026-09-03 · 60% |
| Trust center | https://www.confluent.io/resources/topic/security/ | mediumsource · 2026-09-18 · 60% |
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