Redpanda | The streaming data platform for developers

REDPANDA VS KAFKA

Redpanda brings operational simplicity, powerful performance, and cost-efficiency to your Apache Kafka® workloads. Run all your mission-critical data streams with more confidence.

Complexity

Kafka has extra components like HTTP proxy and schema registry—and software dependencies like the JVM and Apache ZooKeeper™ or KRaft.

Legacy architecture

Kafka was designed to exploit commodity spinning disks and doesn’t take advantage of today’s powerful CPUs, high-performance disks, and networks.

Cost prohibitive

Kafka deployments require infrastructure not just for the brokers, but for the additional components, so costs quickly escalate for large deployments.

BUILT FROM SCRATCH

Redpanda is an Apache Kafka®-compatible streaming data platform designed from the ground up to be lighter, faster, and simpler to operate. Its powerful nature squeezes the most out of today’s cloud infrastructure to give you 10x lower latencies and reduces your total costs by 6x—without sacrificing data safety. Redpanda is available for self-hosted use as Redpanda Platform or as a fully managed service via Redpanda Cloud.

Compare your options

Organizations increasingly need to harness streaming data to power their event-driven apps, AI/ML models, and real-time analytics use cases. It’s critical to choose the right streaming data platform as a foundation for real-time initiatives.

Capability	Apache Kafka	Details
Single binary	-	Kafka is a componentized solution with dependencies on separate nodes/binaries for ZooKeeper/KRaft, JVM, schema registry, and HTTP proxy. Redpanda is a single binary deployment (brokers, schema registry, HTTP proxy, Raft consensus are all included).
Apache Kafka APIs		Redpanda natively supports the Kafka API so it works out-of-the-box with your existing tools and integrations.
Integrated user interface	-	Redpanda Console is a fully integrated user interface, also compatible with Kafka. With Kafka, must use 3rd party tools like Redpanda Console.
Data and partition balancing	-	Redpanda features automatic data and partition balancing, allowing for hands-free ops. With Kafka, you need a 3rd party tool (Cruise Control) for partition and data balancing.
Integrated monitoring	-	Redpanda offers monitoring available natively via Prometheus. Kafka requires third party tools.

Capability	Apache Kafka	Details
Up to 10x performance of Kafka	-	Redpanda achieves 10x lower average latencies vs. Apache Kafka thanks to its optimized performance architecture (built in C++, intelligent memory handling, automatic kernel tuning, async processing, thread-per-core architecture).
Predictable latency at scale	-	Redpanda delivers predictable latency at scale because, unlike Kafka, it bypasses the Linux page cache and manages its own memory and disk I/O.
Optimized resource efficiency	-	Redpanda uses 3-6x fewer compute resources than Apache Kafka when running the same workload.
Tiered storage	-	Redpanda features tiered storage to support retention limits and compaction for topics. With Kafka, tiered storage is currently only available via third-party vendors.

Capability	Apache Kafka	Details
Reduced TCO vs Kafka	-	Redpanda is 3-6x more cost-effective than running the equivalent Kafka infrastructure and team, while still delivering superior performance.
Storage cost-efficiency	-	With Redpanda, S3-compatible cloud storage is the default storage for all streaming data, allowing for near-infinite data retention at a low cost.
Easy Day 2 operations	-	Redpanda automation and intelligent cluster handling eliminates the manual tuning associated with Apache Kafka.

Capability	Apache Kafka	Details
Durability	-	Redpanda uses Raft-native architecture for replication and is Jepsen-verified to be safe for data. Apache Kafka uses ISR for replication, which can be subject to unsafe leader election and data loss.
Continuous cluster balancing	-	Redpanda features ongoing redistribution of data and leadership across nodes to enable clusters to self-manage and self-heal, preventing performance hotspots without administrative burden.
Support	- (community based only)	Redpanda customers have access to a 24x7 helpdesk with SLAs, direct Slack channel, designated account manager, and access to solutions experts. Apache Kafka “support” is 100% community driven.

- Sandy Wilbourn

VP Carrier Division, Akamai Technologies

- Alex Davies

CTO, Jump Trading

- Michael Pearce

Sr. Architect, StoneX

- Kannan D.R.

Enterprise Data Architect, Liveramp

WHAT'S UNDER THE HOOD?

Simple

Redpanda offers a complete streaming data platform in a single binary, including brokers, HTTP proxy, and schema registry — no JVM, no ZooKeeper or KRaft. And it's easy to get going with Redpanda's dev-friendly console, CLI, and APIs.

Powerful

Redpanda was designed to maximize the performance of modern infrastructure, resulting in 10x lower average latencies vs. Kafka. This is due to innovations like Thread-per-Core architecture, C++ design, and async processing.

Cost Efficient

Redpanda helps reduce your infrastructure spend because it runs on 3x fewer compute resources on average vs Apache Kafka. Redpanda's native S3 storage delivers up to 8-9x savings in long term data retention costs.

Reliable

Redpanda offers reliable data streaming at scale with data safety, thanks to its Raft-based replication. It provides enterprise stability with automatic data and partition balancing.

Ecosystem Support

Redpanda's native Kafka API integrates with the full range of Kafka ecosystem tools. Additionally, Redpanda Cloud offers managed connectors for popular databases, analytics, and storage environments.

HAVE IT YOUR WAY

Your needs are unique, so Redpanda offers different deployment options to suit them, including fully managed Redpanda Cloud Services, a free-to-use Community Edition, and a self-hosted Enterprise Edition.