OUR BAG OF TRICKS

Features and capabilities for getting your real-time game on

YOUR EASY BUTTON

Simple.

Single binary

A single binary with built-in schema registry, http proxy, and message broker capabilities makes it easy to deploy and scale your clusters in self-managed environments.

Kafka API-compatible

Using Kafka? Migrate to Redpanda without application code changes. New to data streaming? You get to use the entire Kafka ecosystem out-of-the box.

Redpanda Console

The easiest, most complete web UI for visibility into your data streams with powerful features for time travel debugging and cluster administration.

Local dev, CI/CD

Deploys in minutes, spins up in seconds, and runs efficiently wherever you develop – containers, laptops, x86 and ARM hardware, edge platforms, cloud instances, etc.

Developer-first CLI

Ships with RPK, a single tool for managing your entire Redpanda cluster. It handles everything from low-level tuning to node configuration, and tasks like topic creation.

No ZooKeeper™ or KRaft. No JVM.

100% freedom from external dependencies makes for easier deployments in modern environments such as Kubernetes and edge computing. No more time sunk into tuning the JVM.

Deploys anywhere

Runs easily in the deployment environment of your choice: in your cloud provider’s infrastructure, in your private cloud, on bare metal, or at the edge. Supports existing identity and access management infrastructure.

Inline data transforms

Built-in data transforms to enrich data or apply routine business logic without ping-ponging across additional processing infrastructure.

Redpanda Connect

220+ pre-built connectors to quickly and easily integrate data from disparate sources. Use for free, or purchase a plan for support and unlock enterprise features.

BRING IT ON

Powerful. No, really powerful.

GB/s+ with a small footprint

Ekes out every ounce of juice from your infrastructure to deliver throughput never before possible. Do more with your real-time data.

10x lower tail latencies

Up to 10x lower average latencies for the same workloads on identical hardware, even under sustained loads. Read this benchmark vs Apache Kafka for all the details.

6x faster transactions

Thanks to several architectural optimizations, including an optimistic approach to Raft and parallel commits that deliver up to 6x faster transactions.

Write caching

Make fast machines faster, or run more efficiently on leaner infrastructure. Opt-in to write caching and trade guaranteed durability for drastically reduced latencies.

Predictable p99s

No page cache, no locking, no garbage collection pauses, minimal context switching, and thread-local memory access ensure application latencies you can bet your business on.

Automatic hardware tuning

Comes bundled with an auto-tuner, autonomously configuring your Linux machine for optimal performance, further boosting Redpanda's performance.

CUT YOUR CLOUD SPEND

Cost effective. Up to 6x more.

6x lower total costs

Written in C++ using a thread-per-core model to maximize utilization of hardware. Reduces hardware footprint by 3x or more and total costs by 6x.

Intelligent tiered storage

Breakthrough shadow indexing architecture for efficiently managing large amounts of data. Use of cloud object stores for long term retention keeps cost to a minimum.

Remote Read Replicas

“CDN” for your streaming data! Cherry-pick topics from operational clusters and serve them from analytics clusters without duplicating data and without additional software.

Follower fetching

Reduce network costs for multi-AZ deployments up to 50% with follower fetching, which enables consumers to fetch records from the closest physical replica of a topic partition.

Engine of record

Serves as a single-API "engine of record" for all your streaming applications and services — OLTP, RTA, OLAP and Edge.

Lightweight connectors

Redpanda Connect requires 3x less compute resources than Kafka Connect. It's a single binary that's 128 MiB, consolidating workloads onto fewer machines.

MISSION CRITICAL

Safe and reliable.

No data loss

Built on Raft and safe by default. Get the data safety you need without incurring a performance penalty. See the official Jepsen Report.

Petabyte scale

Scales from your laptop to petabytes of data without impacting code. Scales horizontally or vertically — just add more nodes or allocate more cores as your workload grows.

Continuous cluster balancing

Ongoing redistribution of data and leadership across nodes enables clusters to self-manage and self-heal, preventing performance hotspots without administrative burden.

Enterprise security

Meet data security requirements without the headaches. Redpanda supports end-to-end encryption, Kerberos authentication, Kafka-compatible ACLs, cloud IAM roles, Console SSO, RBAC, and more.

Multi-AZ support

Cloud outages? No problem. Distribute your clusters across multiple availability zones (or racks) to increase system availability.

Native Prometheus integration

Built-in observability via Prometheus enables you to monitor the health and performance of your Redpanda clusters using your favorite DevOps and open source tooling. Redpanda-provided Grafana dashboards get you up and running fast.

Scalable cluster ops

Keep your Redpanda clusters in optimal health with built-in operational workflows (such as Maintenance Mode), cluster diagnostics, seamless rolling upgrades, and other cluster maintenance features.

HEAD-TO-HEAD

Redpanda vs Kafka

Redpanda is an API-compatible replacement for Kafka, that is up to 10x faster, up to 6x more cost-effective and significantly easier to use. Download the detailed comparison.

Capability
Redpanda
Apache Kafka
Details
Single binary
Kafka is a componentized solution with dependencies on separate nodes/binaries for ZooKeeper/KRaft, JVM, schema registry, and HTTP proxy. Redpanda is a single binary deployment (brokers, schema registry, HTTP proxy, Raft consensus are all included).
Apache Kafka APIs
Redpanda natively supports the Kafka API so it works out-of-the-box with your existing tools and integrations.
Integrated user interface
Redpanda Console is a fully integrated user interface, also compatible with Kafka. With Kafka, must use 3rd party tools like Redpanda Console.
Data and partition balancing
Redpanda features automatic data and partition balancing, allowing for hands-free ops. With Kafka, you need a 3rd party tool (Cruise Control) for partition and data balancing.
Integrated monitoring
Redpanda offers monitoring available natively via Prometheus. Kafka requires third party tools.
Capability
Redpanda
Apache Kafka
Details
Up to 10x performance of Kafka
Redpanda achieves 10x lower average latencies vs. Apache Kafka thanks to its optimized performance architecture (built in C++, intelligent memory handling, automatic kernel tuning, async processing, thread-per-core architecture).
Predictable latency at scale
Redpanda delivers predictable latency at scale because, unlike Kafka, it bypasses the Linux page cache and manages its own memory and disk I/O.
Optimized resource efficiency
Redpanda uses 3-6x fewer compute resources than Apache Kafka when running the same workload.
Tiered storage
Redpanda features tiered storage to support retention limits and compaction for topics. With Kafka, tiered storage is currently only available via third-party vendors.
Capability
Redpanda
Apache Kafka
Details
Reduced TCO vs Kafka
Redpanda is 3-6x more cost-effective than running the equivalent Kafka infrastructure and team, while still delivering superior performance.
Storage cost-efficiency
With Redpanda, S3-compatible cloud storage is the default storage for all streaming data, allowing for near-infinite data retention at a low cost.
Easy Day 2 operations
Redpanda automation and intelligent cluster handling eliminates the manual tuning associated with Apache Kafka.
Capability
Redpanda
Apache Kafka
Details
Durability
Redpanda uses Raft-native architecture for replication and is Jepsen-verified to be safe for data. Apache Kafka uses ISR for replication, which can be subject to unsafe leader election and data loss.
Continuous cluster balancing
Redpanda features ongoing redistribution of data and leadership across nodes to enable clusters to self-manage and self-heal, preventing performance hotspots without administrative burden.
Support
- (community based only)
Redpanda customers have access to a 24x7 helpdesk with SLAs, direct Slack channel, designated account manager, and access to solutions experts. Apache Kafka “support” is 100% community driven.

The BYOC option for Redpanda Cloud gives us the managed service experience we require, while enabling us to reduce costs and take advantage of our discounted rates for AWS compute, storage and networking services.

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Rich Armstrong
Director of Engineering, Sovrn

“When selecting a streaming data platform, the choice for Jump was obvious. “For starters, we needed assurance we’d have zero data loss. We also needed something that would meet our high throughput requirements. That put Redpanda in a class of its own.”

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Alex Davies
CTO, Jump Trading

"Redpanda was able to handle the same load on far less resources than Kafka required. It was 5 to 6 times more efficient, greatly reducing our hardware costs as well as support and licensing costs."

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Michael Pearce
Sr. Architect, StoneX

We chose Redpanda Cloud for three important reasons: It gives us the best Kafka API performance by far, has all the features we need and it keeps our costs in check.

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Jordi Miró Bruix
CTO, The Hotels Network

Redpanda helped us grow from the hundreds of millions of dollars in trading per day to billions of dollars.

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Raja Bhatia
VP Engineering, Alpaca

Redpanda BYOC gives us a fully managed Kafka service running on our own cloud servers, balancing our internal compliance requirements with ease of use, and without compromising performance and compatibility.

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Kannan D.R,
Enterprise Data Architect, Liveramp

As a result of switching to Redpanda, we have reduced our cloud infrastructure spend on event streaming by about 70%, resulting in savings of millions of USD annually.

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Arya Ketan
Senior Principal Engineer, ShareChat
READY TO START?

Take Redpanda for a spin!

Looking to improve application performance and simplify data pipelines? Give Redpanda a try or get in touch with us to learn more.