Apache Kafka does not sell paid subscription tiers. Hosting, replicated storage, networking, monitoring, and engineering determine your running cost. Managed services such as Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK have separate commercial pricing.
Apache Kafka pricing in 2026
$0 software license; hosting and operations cost extra
Apache Kafka software
$0 license fee
- Apache License 2.0
- Self-managed; infrastructure and operations cost extra
Every figure on this page was read from Apache Kafka’s own pricing page on 5 Oct 2026. Prices change without notice.
Questions people ask
Is Apache Kafka free?
Yes. Apache Kafka has a $0 software license under Apache 2.0. Your budget still needs to cover hosting and operations. Managed services such as Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK charge separately.
Does Apache Kafka still require ZooKeeper?
No. New current Kafka deployments use KRaft. An existing ZooKeeper-based cluster needs an appropriate migration path before upgrading to versions that no longer support ZooKeeper mode.
Is Kafka Connect the same as Kafka Streams?
No. Connect integrates Kafka with external systems using connector plugins. Streams is a library for writing applications that process Kafka data. A pipeline can use both for different jobs.
Is Apache Kafka suitable for a small team?
It can be, if someone can operate it confidently and the use case justifies the work. I'd favor a managed service when maintaining infrastructure would take too much time away from building the application.
Can Kafka replace a data warehouse?
I wouldn't choose it as a replacement for an analytics warehouse. Kafka is designed around event streams and processing. A warehouse serves a different need when your priority is querying business data and producing reports.