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Streamkap vs Confluent

Zero-Ops CDC vs Managed Kafka

Confluent offers powerful Kafka infrastructure, but requires significant expertise to operate. Streamkap delivers end-to-end CDC without the complexity - no Kafka knowledge required.

Why Teams Switch

Complexity to Simplicity

CDC Specialist vs Kafka Generalist

Confluent is a general-purpose streaming platform. Streamkap is purpose-built for CDC - proven at millions of tables with multi-tenant support and automatic schema evolution.

Governance Included, Not Add-On

Confluent's Stream Governance is a premium add-on. Streamkap includes schema registry, audit logs, data lineage, and compliance controls in every plan.

All-Inclusive vs Add-On Pricing

Confluent charges separately for CKUs, connectors, Flink, storage, and network egress. Streamkap includes everything in one predictable price - no surprise bills.

Zero Kafka Expertise Required

Confluent requires understanding of topics, partitions, consumer groups, and retention policies. Streamkap abstracts all Kafka complexity - just connect your source and destination.

Native Warehouse Delivery

Direct integration with Snowpipe Streaming, BigQuery Storage Write API, Databricks, and Apache Iceberg. No intermediate steps, lowest possible latency.

Minutes to Production

Deploy production-ready pipelines in minutes, not weeks. No capacity planning, no partition sizing, no connector configuration - just real-time data.

Feature Comparison

Streamkap vs Confluent

Feature Streamkap Confluent Cloud
Setup Complexity Minutes, no Kafka knowledge Requires Kafka expertise
Pricing Model All-inclusive, predictable CKU + connectors + storage + network
CDC Focus CDC-optimized, millions of tables proven General-purpose streaming
CDC Connectors 50+ CDC-optimized, fully managed 120+ general connectors (extra cost)
Stream Processing Apache Flink included (SQL, Python, TS) ksqlDB or Flink (additional cost)
Data Governance Schema registry, audit logs, lineage Stream Governance (premium add-on)
Operational Overhead Zero-ops, fully managed Topic/partition management required
Warehouse Integration Native Snowpipe, BigQuery, Databricks, Iceberg Via connectors (extra cost)
Multi-Tenant CDC 100K+ tenants, automatic tagging Manual configuration required
Multi-Cloud AWS, GCP, Azure + BYOC AWS, GCP, Azure

Pricing Comparison

Simple vs Complex Billing

Confluent Cloud Costs Include:

  • CKU/eCKU charges $/hour
  • Storage costs $/GB-hour
  • Network egress $/GB
  • Connector tasks $/task-hour
  • Flink processing $/CFU-hour
  • Schema Registry $/schema
Complex pricing makes cost prediction difficult

Streamkap All-Inclusive:

  • Managed Kafka cluster
  • All source & destination connectors
  • Apache Flink transforms
  • Schema Registry
  • Monitoring & alerting
  • 24/7 support
One predictable price, everything included

Operational Simplicity

No Kafka Expertise Required

Confluent Cloud manages the infrastructure, but you still need to understand Kafka concepts: partitions, consumer groups, retention policies, compaction, exactly-once semantics, and more.

Streamkap is built for data engineers who want results, not infrastructure management. Connect your database, pick your destination, and start streaming - we handle the rest.

Confluent Requires Knowledge Of:

Topics Partitions Consumer Groups Retention Policies Compaction Offsets Replication Factor ACLs Schema Evolution Exactly-Once Semantics
Streamkap handles all of this for you
"Streamkap was 4x faster and had 3x lower total cost of ownership than our previous solution"
Marcin Migda
Staff Data Engineer, SpotOn
Read case study

Switch from Confluent and get 3 months free

We'll help you migrate your pipelines and give you 3 months free to prove the value.

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Start streaming data in minutes without Kafka expertise. No credit card required.