Aiven for Apache Kafka vs Redpanda
Aiven for Apache Kafka
aiven.io
Redpanda
redpanda.comSide by side
| Figure | Aiven for Apache Kafka | Redpanda |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $35/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 4 |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 9.4 (#1) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 9.4 (#1) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Company | Aiven describes itself as an open-source data platform company founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Finland. | Redpanda Data, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and was founded in 2019. |
| Company facts | LinkedIn identifies Aiven as a privately held software company founded in 2016, headquartered in Helsinki, with 201–500 employees. | LinkedIn lists Redpanda Data as privately held, founded in 2019, headquartered in San Francisco and employing 51–200 people. |
| Documentation depth | The documentation includes product concepts, tier guidance, ACL procedures, integrations, metrics references, CLI commands, API calls and Terraform examples. | The documentation site provides guides, concepts, API references, configuration properties, rpk command references and cloud deployment instructions. |
| Headquarters | Helsinki, Finland | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.6 out of 5 from 69 reviews. | 0.0 out of 5 from 0 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.3 out of 5 from 384 reviews for Aiven overall; the page lists 245 Aiven for Apache Kafka reviews. | 4.6 out of 5 from 61 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 36 ratings. | 4.5 out of 5 from 25 ratings |
| Security controls | Aiven states that services use dedicated virtual machines, encryption in transit and at rest, firewalls, IP allowlists, SAML SSO, automated security updates and annual external testing. | Redpanda lists RBAC, ACLs, TLS/mTLS, SAML/OIDC, FIPS compliance, SOC 2 controls and audit logging among its security capabilities. |
| Support | The plan comparison lists Basic support for Free and Developer plans and Advanced and Premium support for Professional. | Paid offerings advertise 24x7 helpdesk coverage with SLAs, a direct Slack channel, designated account management and solutions experts. |
| What it does | Aiven for Apache Kafka is a fully managed Kafka service for event-driven applications, data pipelines and stream processing. | Redpanda is a Kafka-compatible streaming data platform for real-time applications, analytics and agentic workloads. |
Plans
Aiven for Apache Kafka
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Developer$35 a month
- Professional$180 a month
Redpanda
- Community EditionFree
- Bring Your Own CloudPriced on request
- Enterprise EditionPriced on request
- ServerlessPriced on request
In their own words
Aiven for Apache Kafka
Aiven for Apache Kafka is a managed Kafka service that handles provisioning, patching, backups, security, and high availability. It runs on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, OVH, and UpCloud, with cloud availability varying by plan. Tiered storage and diskless topics can keep topic data in cloud object storage so storage and compute scale independently. A managed Schema Registry powered by the open-source Karapace project is included, alongside predictive consumer-lag monitoring, Kafka Connect compatibility, and a REST proxy. Aiven describes clusters with automatic node recovery and multi-node deployment across availability zones, and lists a 99.99% uptime SLA for Professional. Connections can use mTLS and/or SASL authentication with ACL authorization; stored data is encrypted. The Free plan costs nothing and is capped at 250 KiB/s throughput, three days of retention, and five topics with two partitions each. Developer costs $35 a month, while Professional costs $180 a month. A free 30-day trial is listed for more memory or advanced features.
Redpanda
Redpanda is an event-streaming platform for storing real-time events in ordered topics that can be replayed, with access through the Apache Kafka API. Its Kafka compatibility is intended to let existing applications and tools continue without rewrites or changes. The platform uses a native C++ architecture, runs as a single binary, and has no external dependencies. Redpanda Connect supplies more than 300 pre-built connectors for sources, sinks, processors, databases, APIs, cloud services, and AI pipelines. Native Apache Iceberg support and Iceberg topics let streams be materialized into lakehouse-ready tables. Deployment options include Serverless, managed BYOC on AWS, GCP, or Azure, and self-managed installations on bare metal, virtual machines, Kubernetes, or Docker. Redpanda also lists stream processing, a schema registry, both delivery guarantees, and client support for Java, C/C++, Go, Python, Rust, and Node.js. The maker states that its platform delivers 10x lower tail latencies than open-source Kafka.