Side by side

Confluent Cloud vs Karapace

Both stand on schema registry software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

Confluent Cloud

Free plan APILinuxWeb

Confluent Cloud combines managed Kafka streaming with connectors, stream processing, and governance options. A free plan is available, while paid plans start at $385.00 per month and new signups receive $400 in first-30-day credits.

Visit Confluent Cloud

Karapace

Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted

Karapace combines schema management with an HTTP proxy for Kafka events, with authentication and authorization options. Note that built-in schema backup is no longer maintained, and the free-tier capacity has defined throughput, retention, and topic limits.

Visit Karapace

The facts

	Confluent Cloud	Karapace
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Web	API, Linux, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	Standard: $385 a month	Developer: $35 a month
Plans published	4	2
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	confluent.io	aiven.io
On schema registry software	#8 of 26	#12 of 26

Confluent Cloud: what it does well

Free Basic plan with serverless managed clusters.
More than 80 managed connectors are listed.
Supports AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Cluster Linking spans regions and public clouds.
Client language support includes Java, Python, and Go.

What to know first

Paid plans start at $385.00 per month.
Usage-based pricing applies after the 30-day credits.
Dedicated clusters require pre-provisioned resources.

Karapace: what it does well

Open-source software with a free tier.
Supports Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema.
REST Proxy provides HTTP event APIs.
Supports OAuth 2.0/OIDC authentication.
Documents Docker setup and pip installation.

What to know first

Built-in schema backup was removed in version 6.0.0.
Free tier retention is up to three days.
Free tier supports up to five topics.

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