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Managed Apache Kafka

Fully managed, scalable Apache Kafka for real-time data pipelines

Build real-time applications without the complexity of managing infrastructure. With Managed Kafka on Exoscale, you can focus on building your product instead of maintaining operations. Deploy a production-ready environment in minutes, scale with ease, and benefit from integrated monitoring, automation, and the privacy-first European infrastructure.
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Real-time data streaming with Managed Kafka

Apache Kafka on Exoscale is a fully managed, self-driving event streaming platform that automates provisioning, scaling, monitoring, and updates. It is designed for use cases requiring high throughput, low latency, and fault tolerance — whether you’re tracking user activity, processing logs, or synchronizing distributed services.
You receive a production-ready cluster that runs efficiently in the background — no servers, patches, or ops needed. Focus on building responsive apps, automating workflows, and delivering value from live data, while keeping your operational overhead low.

Why choose Exoscale Managed Kafka

Automated operations

Automated Operations

Updates, upgrades, and scaling are handled automatically in the background. Stay current without manual intervention or service interruption.

Reliable uptime guarantee

Reliable Uptime Guarantee

A strong availability architecture ensures minimal downtime, backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA on Business and Premium plans. Ideal for production-critical systems.

Built-in monitoring

Built-in Monitoring

Gain insights with integrated observability tools. Track performance and configure alerts directly via the Exoscale Console.

Quick cluster provisioning

Quick Cluster Provisioning

Deploy production-ready Managed Kafka clusters in minutes. Infrastructure is provisioned automatically with sensible defaults and scaling options.

Easy ecosystem integration

Easy Ecosystem Integration

Connect your Kafka managed service with Exoscale products such as Managed Thanos and OpenSearch for a complete data streaming platform.

High availability included

High Availability Included

Clusters span across availability zones to ensure fault tolerance and reduce downtime for critical use cases.

Real-time use cases for Managed Kafka

Real-time activity tracking and personalization

Digital platforms rely on real-time behavioral data to tailor experiences and increase engagement. Managed Kafka captures clickstreams, search events, and interactions in real time, allowing teams to personalize content, optimize recommendations, and react instantly to user actions. Whether in e-commerce, gaming, or streaming, businesses can turn event data into improved conversion rates and retention without managing complex infrastructure.

Real-time fraud detection and transaction monitoring

Financial services and e-commerce companies need to detect anomalies in real time. Managed Kafka enables continuous processing of transaction data to identify suspicious patterns, flag potential fraud, and trigger alerts instantly. By integrating event streams with analytical models, organizations reduce risk exposure and protect customers.

Real-time supply chain visibility

Retailers, manufacturers, and logistics providers depend on real-time data to manage stock levels and delivery flows efficiently. Managed Kafka streams updates from sensors, warehouses, and ERP systems, giving operations teams a unified, real-time view of inventory and movement across the supply chain. This enables faster reactions to demand changes, reduces shortages, and optimizes fulfillment across locations.

Explore our Managed Apache Kafka Pricing Plans

Exoscale uses a transparent, usage-based pricing model for the Managed Kafka service. Services are billed by the second, with no fixed terms or minimum commitments. Whether you’re running staging environments or scaling production pipelines, plans adapt to your workload.


Startup: For early development and testing. A 3-node cluster with daily backups, automatic failover, and flexible data retention.

Business: For growing applications and staging environments. Includes multi-zone deployment, higher throughput, advanced monitoring, and a 99.99% SLA.

Premium: For production-critical workloads. Dedicated clusters with up to 30 nodes, built for maximum reliability and performance at scale.

Explore our Managed Apache Kafka Plans

Startup

Startup plans are generally recommended for test environments. All Startup plans come with a daily backup and a backup count of 112. Data retention is only limited by storage.

Memory CPU Volume size Nodes Replication Factor Price / Hour ({{ currency | uppercase }})
Startup-2 2 GB 2 90 GB 3 2 {{ prices['dbaas-kafka']['startup-2'][currency] | number:8 }}
  1. [1]

    Kafka is a trademark of The Apache Software Foundation. Any rights therein are reserved to The Apache Software Foundation. Any use by Exoscale is for referential purposes only and does not imply endorsement, sponsorship or affiliation between The Apache Software Foundation and Exoscale.

  2. [2]

    Describes the Volume size for the whole cluster, as this is a distributed system.

  3. [3]

    Available in all Zones

Managed Apache Kafka features

Explore all Managed Kafka features

Combine Managed Kafka with other Exoscale products

Build a complete real-time data platform by combining Managed Kafka with compute, storage, and observability services. Exoscale products integrate seamlessly for end-to-end streaming architectures.

Compute Instances

Compute Instances

Run your Kafka consumers, stream processors, and application backends on flexible Compute Instances. Scale horizontally to match your event throughput.

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Simple Object Storage

Simple Object Storage

Archive Kafka topic data to S3-compatible Object Storage for long-term retention, compliance, or downstream analytics and data lake use cases.

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Managed Grafana

Managed Grafana

Monitor your Kafka clusters and streaming pipelines with Managed Grafana dashboards. Visualize throughput, lag, and consumer group health in real time.

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Managed Kafka trusted by teams across Europe

Whether you’re evaluating stream processing or launching your next application, our support team is ready to help you explore how Managed Apache Kafka fits into your architecture. We will support you from setup to scale.

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Powered by aiven.io

Our DBaaS is powered by Aiven, one of the leading European companies for managing open source data infrastructure in the cloud. The partnership offers Exoscale customers an integrated environment for their complete cloud infrastructure, without any security compromise. Both companies are GDPR compliant to ensure highest standards for customers’ data. The sole use of open source projects make sure that customers are not vendor locked-in and always at the latest standard of technology.

Helpful resources for Managed Kafka service

Quick Start

Deploy your first Managed Kafka cluster in minutes with this step-by-step guide.
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Documentation

Access detailed documentation for Managed Apache Kafka, including configuration, connectors, and best practices.
View documentation

Portal

Get started in our integrated environment with just a few clicks.
Open portal

Explore more Exoscale services

Expand your streaming platform with services that analyze your data, orchestrate your workloads, and scale across European infrastructure.

Managed OpenSearch

Managed OpenSearch

Index and analyze data streamed from Kafka for real-time search, log analytics, and security insights across your infrastructure.

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Managed Kubernetes

Managed Kubernetes

Deploy and orchestrate your Kafka producers, consumers, and stream processing applications at scale on a fully managed Kubernetes service.

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DBaaS

DBaaS

Explore our full range of managed databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, and OpenSearch. All fully managed in Europe.

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Frequently asked questions about Managed Kafka

What is Managed Kafka?

Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform. Managed Kafka on Exoscale is Apache Kafka as a service — a fully managed offering that lets you stream and process data in real time without handling the infrastructure yourself. Exoscale takes care of provisioning, patching, monitoring, and scaling.

Who is Apache Kafka suitable for?

It’s ideal for developers, startups, and enterprises building event-driven applications, data pipelines, or microservice architectures. Common use cases include real-time analytics, log aggregation, fraud detection, IoT data processing, and stream processing.

How is pricing for the Managed Kafka service calculated?

Managed Apache Kafka is billed by the second based on the selected plan and usage. You only pay for the resources you actually consume, with no long-term commitments. See our pricing page for current rates, or use the pricing calculator to estimate costs.

Where is my Kafka data stored?

All Managed Kafka clusters are hosted in ISO 27001-certified European data centers across Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and Croatia. Data remains in the country of your chosen zone, ensuring full GDPR compliance and data sovereignty. This makes Exoscale Managed Kafka suitable for regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government.

What is the difference between Apache Kafka and a traditional message queue?

Traditional message queues (like RabbitMQ) deliver messages to a single consumer and remove them after processing. Apache Kafka retains messages in a distributed log for a configurable period, allowing multiple consumers to read the same data independently and at their own pace. This makes Kafka ideal for event sourcing, stream processing, and replay scenarios where data needs to be consumed by multiple services or reprocessed after the fact.