TL;DR - Apache Kafka
- Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform used by 80% of Fortune 100 companies
- It handles trillions of events daily for real-time data pipelines and streaming applications
- Free and open-source, with Confluent Cloud managed service from $0.00 for basic usage
Pricing: Free forever
Best for: Individuals & startups
Score: 92/100
Pricing Plans
free trialOpen Source
Free
Self-hosted
- Full functionality
- Community support
- Self-managed
- Apache license
Most Popular
Confluent Standard
Usage-based
Cloud managed
- Up to 1GBps
- 500 partitions included
- Auto-scaling
- Basic support
Confluent Dedicated
Custom
Enterprise
- Unlimited throughput
- Dedicated clusters
- Premium support
- 60% lower TCO
About Apache Kafka
Kafka moves data at massive scale. When millions of events per second need to flow between systems reliably, Kafka provides the highway. Producers publish messages, consumers read them, and nothing gets lost even when systems crash.
Topics organize streams of data with configurable retention. Consumer groups enable parallel processing. The distributed architecture means no single point of failure and virtually unlimited throughput.
Kafka has become the backbone of modern data architectures. Real-time analytics, event-driven microservices, change data capture—any use case involving high-volume streaming likely runs on Kafka.
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Apache Kafka FAQ
Yes, Kafka is open source under Apache 2.0 license. Self-hosting is free. Confluent Cloud and AWS MSK provide managed services at a cost.
Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform. Handle real-time data feeds at scale. Used for messaging, event sourcing, log aggregation, and stream processing.
Real-time data pipelines, event-driven architectures, log aggregation, and stream processing. LinkedIn (creator), Uber, and Netflix use it for massive event streams.
Kafka is better for high-throughput event streaming. RabbitMQ is better for traditional message queuing with complex routing. Kafka for big data; RabbitMQ for application messaging.
Confluent is the company founded by Kafka creators. Offers Confluent Cloud (managed Kafka) and enterprise features. Commercial option for teams that don't want to manage Kafka themselves.