Aiven for Apache Kafka vs Redpanda

Aiven and Redpanda both put a Kafka-style API in front of your producers, yet they sell it in different ways. Aiven runs upstream Apache Kafka as a managed service and publishes a dollar price for each of its three plans on one page. Redpanda sells its own broker as Serverless, bring-your-own-cloud or a self-run edition, and its pricing page shows no rates at all. Aiven says it was founded in Helsinki in 2016, while Redpanda Data, Inc. gives a San Francisco address.

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Both are reviewed in full in our event streaming platform ranking: Aiven for Apache Kafka and Redpanda.

1. 01

   What the zero-dollar tier lets you push through

   Aiven's free plan costs $0 a month and allows up to 250 KiB/s of throughput, three days of retention and up to 5 topics with 2 partitions each, with Schema Registry and REST proxy included. Its FAQ says free plans have no time limit, though unused services can be shut down. Redpanda lists Serverless at 0 USD, pay as you go or annual commit, with a 100 MB/s write limit, though the page never labels it free and lists no per-unit rate.

   Edge: Aiven for Apache Kafka

2. 02

   Reading the monthly bill before you sign

   Aiven's Developer plan is $35 a month or $0.04 an hour, with up to 1 MB/s and 20 topics. Professional starts from $180 a month or $3.84 an hour, with unlimited throughput, connections, partitions and retention. The prices are in dollars, which a euro budget has to convert. Redpanda's BYOC and Enterprise Edition prices are not listed, and BYOC needs an annual commitment with an estimate form, so you cannot cost it from the page alone.

   Edge: Aiven for Apache Kafka

3. 03

   Where the brokers can actually be installed

   Aiven is cloud-hosted and runs on any cloud, with a bring-your-own-cloud option mentioned in case studies, with no on-prem or self-run route mentioned anywhere we looked. Redpanda covers more ground: multi-tenant Serverless on AWS and GCP, BYOC clusters in your own VPC on AWS, GCP or Azure, and a self-hosted Enterprise Edition. If the broker has to sit on hardware you control, Redpanda is the one that says so.

   Edge: Redpanda

4. 04

   Apache 2.0 under the hood versus a source-available broker

   Aiven's FAQ says the underlying Kafka is Apache 2.0, though the licence of Aiven's managed service itself is not stated. Redpanda's pricing page does not name a licence and links to its GitHub repository. Our notes record the Community Edition as source-available under BSL 1.1, which excludes offering it as a streaming or queuing service. That matters little to a team consuming the broker and a great deal to anyone reselling it.

   Edge: Aiven for Apache Kafka

5. 05

   SLA figures and the throughput ceilings behind them

   Aiven's Developer plan carries a 99% SLA and Professional a 99.99% SLA, with production figures of 1.8 GB/s in, 68,000 partitions and 120,000 connections, and tested limits of 10 GB/s and 154,000 partitions. Redpanda Serverless offers 99.9% with 100 MB/s write and 5,000 partitions, while BYOC reaches 2 GB/s write and 112,500 partitions at 99.99%. Both reach four nines on their upper tier, which leaves the decision with the tier your budget reaches.

   Depends on the buyer

6. 06

   Connectors, schema tools and the extras around the broker

   Aiven lists 50+ connectors, including a managed Debezium connector for change data capture from PostgreSQL and MySQL, plus a built-in Karapace Schema Registry, tiered storage and a follower fetcher. Redpanda Connect joins data systems across hundreds of sources and sinks, Redpanda SQL queries live and historical data, and its Agentic Data Plane has a kill switch that can freeze agents over budget or rule breaches, with no thresholds given. These cover different needs.

   Depends on the buyer

Can I move a Kafka workload off Aiven without rewriting clients?

The Kafka underneath is upstream Apache 2.0 code according to Aiven's FAQ, so clients and connectors are not tied to a proprietary protocol.

Aiven also bundles a Karapace schema registry that you would need to replace or run yourself. We found no step-by-step migration guide on the pages we read.

Does Redpanda have a trial before I commit to a contract?

The Enterprise Edition has a 30-day trial, and the page metadata says free trials are available in general. Other plans carry no stated trial terms on that pricing page. BYOC needs an annual commitment, so ask about the trial before you sign.

Which of the two is based in Europe?

Aiven's home page says the company was founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Finland, and is privately held. Redpanda Data, Inc. gives a San Francisco, CA address on its home page, and the place of incorporation is not stated. Neither page names a parent company.

• Aiven Kafka pricing page: the Free, Developer and Professional dollar figures, throughput and topic limits, and the SLA per plan.
• Aiven for Apache Kafka product page: 50+ connectors, Debezium, Karapace, production scale figures and the cloud hosting model.
• Aiven home page: founding in 2016 in Helsinki and private ownership.
• Redpanda pricing page: Serverless and BYOC limits, unlisted prices, the 30-day Enterprise trial and the three deployment forms.
• Redpanda home page: legal name, San Francisco address, Redpanda Connect, Redpanda SQL and the agent kill switch.