Why teams are leaving Confluent for Apache Kafka
Why teams are leaving Confluent for Apache Kafka
Why teams are leaving Confluent for Apache Kafka
As infrastructure costs climb, many teams are rethinking their data streaming stack — and for organizations running Apache Kafka through Confluent, the price tag can be a wake-up call. While Confluent provides powerful features and managed services, the licensing fees and cloud markups often drive teams to explore more cost-effective options.
Why Confluent can get expensive
For organizations running mission-critical data pipelines on Kafka, Confluent is often the default vendor. But that convenience comes with tradeoffs:
High licensing costs, especially for advanced features or enterprise support tiers.
Premium SLAs based on node count, memory, or throughput.
Cloud service markups, whether hosted by Confluent Cloud or provisioned in your own infrastructure.
Vendor lock-in, making it hard to scale down or pivot without rewriting parts of your pipeline.
If you’re processing millions of messages per day or running multiple environments (dev, staging, prod), costs can escalate quickly — often without adding meaningful business value.
Cost comparison:
Confluent vs. Fully Managed Apache Kafka
One of the primary differentiators between Confluent Kafka and Apache Kafka is cost. We built this calculator to help teams get a quick estimate of how much they can save (or not) by moving to fully managed Apache Kafka by Dattell in place of Confluent Kafka.
Enter your monthly license/support fees and select your message volume range to see the cost difference for Confluent vs Apache Kafka. This form is anonymous. We do not collect any of the data you enter.
Cost comparison:
Confluent vs. Fully Managed Apache Kafka
Enter your monthly license/support fees and select your message volume range to see how much you can save on your Kafka implementation. This form is anonymous. We do not collect any of the data inputted.
Cost comparison:
Confluent vs. Fully Managed Apache Kafka by Dattell
Why some teams hesitate to leave Confluent
Despite the cost, many teams feel locked in by the managed experience Confluent provides. Common concerns include:
“Who will handle failovers, upgrades, and performance tuning?”
“How do we maintain uptime without enterprise support?”
“Will my team be on the hook for 24×7 Kafka troubleshooting?”
“What if something breaks during the migration?”
These are valid concerns. And they’re exactly what we’ve designed Dattell’s Kafka support offering to solve.
How Dattell makes the transition easy
At Dattell, we provide fully managed Kafka in your environment (cloud or on-prem) — with the same technical excellence you expect from an enterprise provider, but without the overhead of a 3,000-employee company. Our customers get direct access to senior engineers, faster response times, and predictable costs — not layers of bureaucracy.
We work with companies who want to regain control over their Kafka infrastructure while avoiding operational risk. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
End-to-end migration
We handle your move from Confluent to open-source Kafka — including cluster setup, data replication, topic migration, downtime planning, and validation.
Equal (or better) uptime SLAs
We offer 24×7 monitoring and response backed by real Kafka experts — not a rotating helpdesk. In many cases, teams experience better performance post-migration due to architecture tuning.
Team training & operational support
We don’t just run Kafka for you — we enable your team to understand it. That includes documentation, live training, and ongoing best-practices reviews.
Managed or self-managed flexibility
You choose the model: Dattell can run your Kafka infrastructure end-to-end, or we can support your internal team with SLAs, observability, and advisory.
The payoff: cost savings and ownership
Once you’re off Confluent’s licensing and hosted service tiers, the cost savings are immediate and ongoing.
No license fees per node, per GB, or per cluster
Cheaper cloud bills (Kafka can be tuned for your actual workload)
More control over replication, retention, and storage costs
Predictable pricing — you’re paying for architecture and support, not overhead
Even with Dattell providing managed support, most clients cut costs by 40–60% over their previous Confluent spend.
Who this works best for
- Teams that want enterprise-level reliability without enterprise-level pricing.
- Platform teams seeking more predictable infrastructure costs.
- Organizations planning long-term growth and want cost-per-message to scale down, not up.
- Teams currently spending or projected to reach $500k+ per year on their Kafka implementation.
Final thoughts
This isn’t a knock against Confluent. It’s a recognition that not every team needs a full enterprise platform to run Kafka effectively — and that for many, open-source Kafka offers the same power at a much lower total cost of ownership.
With the right migration strategy and support model, switching away from Confluent is easier and safer than most teams expect.
Connect with us if you’re curious about what that might look like for your team.
A Confluent Alternative
Most customers reduce their Kafka bill by 40-60%.
Get the same SLAs without the price tag.
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- 15-minute response times
- We handle migration end-to-end and train your team
A Confluent Alternative
The same SLAs without the price tag.
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- 15-minute response times
- We handle migration end-to-end and train your team
A Confluent Alternative
The same SLAs without the price tag.
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
- 15-minute response times
- We handle migration end-to-end and train your team
Fully Managed Apache Kafka®
Fully Managed Apache Kafka®
Fully Managed Apache Kafka®
Built in your environment • 99.99% uptime SLA • 15-min response times •
Flat-fee pricing • Dedicated Kafka expert
Visit our Managed Apache Kafka® page for more details on our Kafka service.