ConfluentPricing

Confluent Pricing 2022

An influx of data that you can’t handle is as stressful as juggling a porcupine, opossum, and skunk while listening to country music. You can’t think long enough to figure out the meaning of even juggling woodland creatures. Similarly, it’s just as difficult trying to process, let alone actually analyze, the data as it floods in.

In comes Streaming Analytics software like Confluent. Confluent is designed to keep up with the demand of modern data streaming while simultaneously offering tools to manage the ever-growing data workloads for your team.

What is Confluent?

Confluent is a data streaming platform. Data streaming or event stream processing refers to data flowing between sources. With stream processing software, you can manage, store, and analyze real-time data streams.

To keep up with the constantly changing data streams, other technologies may utilize batch processing which groups data in batches before downloading for management. Confluent offers real-time data processing as the streams are generated.

This means you can save time and keep up with customer demand for necessary services that generate data (event streaming, such as multiplayer games, stock trading, and constantly changing social media feeds. If you want to learn more about how data streaming works go here. You can also learn more information about Confluent see their docs here.

Confluent runs on the open-source software Apache Kafka and is essentially the managed version with tools to expedite productivity. Their 4 main products are Stream Designer, Confluent Connector, ksqlDB, and Steam Governance.

The Stream Designer offers a graphical user interface for building pipelines running on Apache Kafka. The visual building experience speeds up the process and eliminates boilerplate code (repetitive code sequences).

Confluent Connectors uses Apache Kafka connectors for codeless data integration with other apps. It has pre-built connectors and fully managed connectors. You can work with MongoDB, Amazon S3, and Snowflake. In general, it can work with the big 3 cloud providers Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.

ksqlDB is a SQL relational database. It handles event streaming in real-time. Teams can build applications inside it easily using SQL code. Its backend is the Kafka Streams Java library which can be harder to manage and develop in, making ksqlDB easier for beginners. For more information on Kafka Streams see Apache Kafka’s documentation here.

Confluent’s Steam Governance offers large teams tools to manage data regulations while collaborating. You can manage stream quality, stream lineage, and your stream data catalog for self-service discovery.

Confluent offers deployment of their data streaming service in two forms; the Confluent Platform and the Confluent Cloud.

The Confluent Platform is a self-managed environment designed for enterprises that want a private, cloud-native experience. It has unlimited storage, elastic scalability, and high availability. It includes Confluent’s Connectors, ksqlDB, and cluster linking for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Pricing requires a consultation.

In Confluent Cloud, teams can take advantage of the fully managed cloud-native environment. It has access to Stream Designer, ksqlDB, Stream Governance, and Confluent Connectors. Similar to the Confluent Platform deployment version, it has cluster linking for hybrid and multi-cloud solutions along with infinite storage. We go over the pricing for this option in the next section.

Industry use cases include IT, computer software, and financial services. On their site, they advertise solutions for gaming, retail, and communications. Some well-known companies that use Confluent include Walmart, Expedia, and Intel.

To learn more about their software, check out Confluent’s product demo below.

What is Confluent | Jay Kreps (CEO, Confluent)

How Much Does Confluent Cost?

Confluent does not have upfront pricing for their Confluent Platform, but they do offer pricing for the Confluent Cloud.

Confluent Cloud pricing is set up very similarly to cloud computing platforms that are pay-as-you-go with a series of ever-confusing usage rates. The plans are all usage-based according to the hourly rate and cluster type. Each subscription is based on the cluster type of the same name. Products/services like Stream Designer and Stream Governance all have their own rates.

On the pricing page, they advertise a self-service cost estimate calculator, but you have to get a quote instead. It’s not an actual calculator. The same goes for the total cost of ownership (TCO) assessment they claim to offer, you have to fill out a contact form to get it.

The pricing table on Confluent mentions CKUs, which are a measurement of pre-allocated resources. Throughput is the number of data events arriving per hour. Ingress refers to the number of bytes produced by the cluster each second, and egress means the number of bytes consumed by the cluster each second. If you're new to the concept of partitioning (breaking data into parts), see Confluent’s learning materials here.

For more billing information, go here. If you want more specifications on how their metrics work, then make sure to see Kakfka cluster types here.

The Basic cluster is best suited for teams that want to test out the software or are in the early stages of development. It comes with on-demand cluster provisioning. It’s technically free, but once you get past certain limits, you will need to upgrade to standard. If your team isn’t sure whether Confluent is the best fit then you can always start with this plan.

Standard is recommended for production-ready teams. The plan scales up to 1GBps throughput and includes your first 500 partitions in the price. Dedicated, on the other hand, is designed for teams with massive event streaming well past 1GBps.

The big difference between these plans is how much usage you need to accommodate. It’s not one of those situations where bigger is better, especially if you don’t expect that much event streaming per hour.

Confluent Alternatives

The developers that founded Confluent were also part of the Apache Kafka project, which is currently maintained by the Apache Software Foundation and is completely separate from Confluent. Apache Kafka is an open-source software for data stream processing. Confluent is a managed, commercial option for enterprise teams that want to streamline the maintenance of the software.

If you don’t want to pay for a fully managed version, then you can simply use Apache Kafka by itself. You can go to their main site here. As with any open-source software solution, you are taking on installation, maintenance, and server costs.

Apache Kafka software is used by 80% of fortune 100 companies like Netflix, Dailymotion, and Red Hat. The most popular use cases for them are banking, manufacturing, insurance, and telecom industries.

Something interesting Confluent does is they hype up Apache Kafka and themselves by association. It’s not uncommon (or dishonest) for software companies that improve on open-source solutions to use the power of that free service to their advantage. To be clear, Apache Kafka, even by itself, deserves the hype. They make up 20% of the market for enterprise application integration software and have had 5 million unique lifetime downloads in total.

Apache Kafka won’t have the additional tools Confluent offers like the Stream Designer, Stream Governance, or ksqlDB. It will have pre-built connectors for enterprise-level integrations, Kafka Streams library, and access to a massive ecosystem of other open-source technologies that you can find here.

For a breakdown of user feedback between Apache Kafka and Confluent, go here. If you want to see Confluent’s main comparison of the two versions, go here.

More Resources

Here are some great tutorials for getting started with Confluent. Below is a demo for setting up your first cluster.

Confluent Cloud Demo: Create an Apache Kafka® Cluster

This tutorial is for working on your first Kafka application.

Apache Kafka® 101: Your First Kafka Application in 10 Minutes or Less (Hands On)

If you want to see more streaming analytics software, go here. For those that have used any of the platforms discussed here, please leave a review to help other buyers make informed decisions.