Redpanda Cloud vs. Amazon MSK
Simpler operations, high performance, and responsive support. Learn why companies are choosing Redpanda over Amazon MSK to power mission-critical data streams with confidence.
Customers that made the switch

Why Redpanda?
Redpanda makes real-time data processing easy. Streamlined architecture, great performance, and developer-friendly tools—all without external dependencies. Build more, spend less, and be agile with the unified platform that simplifies building real-time applications.
Key feature breakdown
Redpanda Serverless | Redpanda BYOC | Amazon MSK | Amazon MSK Serverless | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Deploy | ||||
Deployment Model | Fully managed | Fully managed | Limited automation for Standard brokers; Express brokers are fully managed, but less customizable | Fully managed |
Provisioning Time | Instant (pre-provisioned) | Tens of minutes | Mixed provisioning: Slow for Standard brokers, faster (but more expensive) for Express | Minutes |
Operate | ||||
Operational Overhead | None | Minimal, fully managed with native Raft implementation (no ZooKeeper or KRaft) | Standard requires ZooKeeper or KRaft, more maintenance | Minimal, fully managed |
Maintenance | None | Automated updates, customer-defined maintenance window | Depends: Standard requires manual intervention; Express is automated, but can't control maintenance window | None |
SLA | 99.9% | 99.99% | 99.9% uptime, exclusions for Apache Kafka, ZooKeeper, etc | 99.9% uptime, similar exclusions |
Scale | ||||
Scalability | Automatic scaling | BYOC supports multi-GB/s write & read throughput, but in defined service tiers | Broker trade-offs: Manual & slow for Standard with partition sprawl issues; Express is faster but higher price-performance | Automatic scaling |
Performance | Better price-performance across 5K max partitions | Low latency, optimized C++ engine; integrated auto partition balancing | Higher latency, JVM-based Kafka; Standard requires Cruise Control for auto partition rebalancing | Limited to 2.4K partitions |
Pricing | Pay-go pricing, with $0.10/hour base cost; discounts + expert support via annual commitment | Higher costs for multi-AZ but reduced in single-AZ; BYOC uses existing discounts and committed spend | Tiered Storage costs 3x more than Redpanda, with higher per-instance costs for Express; discounts for large orgs + no cross-AZ fees | Pay-go pricing with $0.75/hour base cost; support staffed by cloud generalists |
Innovate | ||||
Data Sovereignty | No control over underlying infrastructure | Full control over infrastructure, BYOC option for compliance on AWS, GCP, Azure | AWS-owned Tiered Storage, MSK not available in GCP or Azure | No control over underlying infrastructure |
Roadmap Recap | Uses the same core engine as Redpanda BYOC, but some enterprise features not supported (e.g., AWS PrivateLink) | 2024: Apache Iceberg integration, native connectors for Snowpipe Streaming & PostgreSQL CDC, ultra low-latency write caching mode | 2024: Express brokers, scale down of Standard brokers, KRaft support | 2023: Added Asia regions |
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