--- title: Confluent Reviews meta\_title: 'Confluent Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta\_description: Filter 114 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Confluent works for a business like yours. aggregate\_rating: rating\_value: 4.4 review\_count: 114 scale: '5' date\_modified: '2026-08-09' parent\_category: name: Big Data url: https://www.g2.com/categories/big-data --- ### Confluent Pros and Cons: Top 5 Advantages and Disadvantages #### Quick AI Summary Based on G2 Reviews Generated from real user reviews Users appreciate the **simplicity and scalability** of Confluent's cloud services, enhancing their experience with Kafka and Flink. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311123&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users appreciate the **effortless real-time data integration** through Confluent's managed cloud services, enhancing their workflow significantly. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311173&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users appreciate the **wide range of connectors** in Confluent, simplifying real-time data integration and enhancing productivity. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311192&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users appreciate the **simplified real-time data integration** with Confluent, benefiting from its managed cloud services and wide connectors. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311202&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Confluent, making data integration and stream processing effortless and efficient. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311276&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users note that the **cost estimation can be high** as data volume increases, requiring time to learn the system. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311235&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users find Confluent to be **expensive** as costs rise with data volume and features are limited in lower editions. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311185&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users face a **steep learning curve** with Confluent, alongside rising costs as data volume increases. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311242&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users find a **lack of features** in Confluent, especially with essential tools restricted to the Enterprise edition. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311077&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) Users find the **steep learning curve** challenging, requiring significant time to grasp Confluent's workflow and features. [(1 mentions)](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311263&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) ### 5 Pros or Advantages of Confluent ##### 1. Cloud Computing Users appreciate the **simplicity and scalability** of Confluent's cloud services, enhancing their experience with Kafka and Flink. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311123&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you like about Confluent? I really liked how Confluent simplified working with Kafka and Flink through managed cloud services like Azure. The simple UI and wide range of connec ##### 2. Cloud Services Users appreciate the **effortless real-time data integration** through Confluent's managed cloud services, enhancing their workflow significantly. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311173&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you like about Confluent? I really liked how Confluent simplified working with Kafka and Flink through managed cloud services like Azure. The simple UI and wide range of connec ##### 3. Connectors Users appreciate the **wide range of connectors** in Confluent, simplifying real-time data integration and enhancing productivity. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311192&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you like about Confluent? I really liked how Confluent simplified working with Kafka and Flink through managed cloud services like Azure. The simple UI and wide range of connec ##### 4. Data Integration Users appreciate the **simplified real-time data integration** with Confluent, benefiting from its managed cloud services and wide connectors. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311202&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you like about Confluent? I really liked how Confluent simplified working with Kafka and Flink through managed cloud services like Azure. The simple UI and wide range of connec ##### 5. Ease of Use Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Confluent, making data integration and stream processing effortless and efficient. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311276&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you like about Confluent? I really liked how Confluent simplified working with Kafka and Flink through managed cloud services like Azure. The simple UI and wide range of connec ### 5 Cons or Disadvantages of Confluent ##### 1. Cost Estimation Users note that the **cost estimation can be high** as data volume increases, requiring time to learn the system. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311235&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you dislike about Confluent? The pricing will shoot up as your data volume grows up. Some features are only available in Enterprise edition. Also one must spend lot of time to und ##### 2. Expensive Users find Confluent to be **expensive** as costs rise with data volume and features are limited in lower editions. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311185&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you dislike about Confluent? The pricing will shoot up as your data volume grows up. Some features are only available in Enterprise edition. Also one must spend lot of time to und ##### 3. Initial Difficulties Users face a **steep learning curve** with Confluent, alongside rising costs as data volume increases. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311242&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you dislike about Confluent? The pricing will shoot up as your data volume grows up. Some features are only available in Enterprise edition. Also one must spend lot of time to und ##### 4. Lack of Features Users find a **lack of features** in Confluent, especially with essential tools restricted to the Enterprise edition. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311077&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you dislike about Confluent? The pricing will shoot up as your data volume grows up. Some features are only available in Enterprise edition. Also one must spend lot of time to und ##### 5. Learning Curve Users find the **steep learning curve** challenging, requiring significant time to grasp Confluent's workflow and features. [ See 1 mentions ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/reviews?filters%5Bsentiment_snippet%5D=2311263&qs=pros-and-cons#reviews) See Related User Reviews ![Verified User](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User") A Verified User Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4.5/5 "Confluent: Go to platform for Real-Time Data Streaming" What do you dislike about Confluent? The pricing will shoot up as your data volume grows up. Some features are only available in Enterprise edition. Also one must spend lot of time to und ## Top-Rated Alternatives [ ![Cloudera](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/hd_favicon/dcfb9e6879febb34cef773ddde921835/cloudera.svg "Cloudera") Cloudera 4.1/5(136) ](https://www.g2.com/products/cloudera/reviews) [ ![Lenses](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/hd_favicon/00711a899e586e752321ee33312a1509/lenses.svg "Lenses") Lenses 4.2/5(17) ](https://www.g2.com/products/lenses/reviews) [ ![Apache Kafka](https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/product/image/large_detail/large_detail_809aa88d3571ee805a47d8fb156ba412/apache-kafka.jpg "Apache Kafka") Apache Kafka 4.5/5(132) ](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-kafka/reviews) [ View All Alternatives ](https://www.g2.com/products/confluent/competitors/alternatives) R Rok . Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 2/23/2023 "So far so good" 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? No need to self manage kafka clusters and kafka connect connectors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? No option to whitelist IP addresses with access to kafka cluster Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? A way to connect micro services with each other, message processing. Really useful that we can have multiple consumers processing same events. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite on behalf of seller ![Verified User in Individual & Family Services](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Individual & Family Services") UI Verified User in Individual & Family Services Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 5/11/2023 "Work with Kafka topics and ksqlDB" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? ksqlDB provides an excellent instrument to create ETL processes for enriching the data Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? There are a lot of restrictions in ksqlDB and I don't see any improvements in this direction. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? Create ETL for enriching data in realtime streaming Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More 5/17/2023 Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite on behalf of seller ![Verified User in Religious Institutions](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Religious Institutions") UR Verified User in Religious Institutions Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 5/11/2023 "Review of confluent" 3.5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? It's a straightforward way of interacting with the Kafka ecosystem Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? The UI is very hard to use, and the documentation is out of sync Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? It's providing a wrapper and managed solution for using Kafka Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite on behalf of seller ![Srikanth A.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Srikanth A.") SA Srikanth A. Software Engineer Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 10/8/2022 "Truly Serverless workloads with fully managed Kafka" 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? Managing the Kafka and maintaining the underline infra is not an issue anymore, No more issues that are on our heads with proper Fault Tolerant Brokers and Kafka-Connect with Fully manged setup is really good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? I did not find much of cons here, Its an amazing fully managed Service Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? Less headaches with no more monitoring and no more additional human monitoring involved in managing the Kafka Cluster underline infra i.e Broker, and what fascinated me the most is the Fully Managed KafkaConnect with Confluent itself, with this our Event driven Architecture is much more simpler and very much error prone w.r.t to Operations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More 10/13/2022 Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: Seller invite ![Mohammed Inteqab A.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "Mohammed Inteqab A.") MA Mohammed Inteqab A. Cloud Data Engineer - Spark, Scala, Kafka, Azure, AWS Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 1/9/2023 Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores. "Confluent Kafka has very much user friendly interface for viewing a topic's data and meta data." 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? GUI interface, SQL interaction, meta data showcase, topic information Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? Not much i can think of, yet can be improved in the performance side Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? I used the confluent Kafka product. Yeah was useful Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Computer Software](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Computer Software") AC Verified User in Computer Software Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 12/6/2022 "Confluent offers an easy to use interface for managing and operating Kafka Clusters." 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? The user interface provides a seamless experience and has lots of rich features and built-in tools to help you debug. I also like the Free tier clusters. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? The user interface can become laggy when dealing with lots of environments and clusters in the same tenant. It could be improved by providing a more resilient user interface that does not slow down when rendering large amounts of data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? Confluent is solving our managed serverless problem. We do not want to self-manage our own infrastructure for hosting Kafka/serverless events. Instead, we use Confluent to focus on development instead of operations and maintenance. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite on behalf of seller ![David F.](/assets/transparent-ad5be28fbcd25b7b08d2cebe1d957125437fb5407d75ee717965ad22c8808791.gif "David F.") DF David F. Senior Software Engineer II Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 5/17/2022 "Feature-rich cloud service with a wonderful support team" 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? I should start off by clarifying that my company has not, at this time, moved forward with Confluent. That has to do with the direction our platform is taking, rather than the capabilities/quality of the Confluent solution. As we built a proof of concept with Confluent Cloud, it was very clear that it is feature-rich and very user-friendly. They are actively building a Terraform provider which will allow us to do even more IaC configuration, rather than manually or with deployment scripts. All that said, I think the place where Confluent shined the most was with regards to the contacts with whom we worked throughout our process. They proactively reached out to us to provide helpful resources/articles/videos, and got on calls with us to discuss implementation solutions and to better understand our needs. There was no pressure for us to sign a contract or move forward with any sales process. Their goal was purely to make themselves available to us so we could build the best possible solution and follow best practices and design standards around the Kafka ecosystem. Confluent Cloud also offers a lot of wonderful out-of-the-box connectors to systems like SQS, Lambda, etc. It saves you from writing a lot of boilerplate code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? Honestly, this is a tough one to answer because my experience was so overwhelmingly positive. Though I've worked in eventually consistent and event-sourced systems before, I am a Kafka newbie. So, there is a pretty steep learning curve around it. While I do think that Confluent Cloud offered some great resources and tutorials, I wish they could go a step further with demonstrations of how to integrate Kafka with your software, with real-world examples of what the consuming/producing code might look like and how that would fit into your larger application. Also, I was struggling to understand how multiple message producers could write messages with optimistic concurrency, a la EventStoreDb. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Confluent: Give it a shot. You can get an evaluation coupon code upon signup that allows you to play around with Confluent Cloud and try it for yourself. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? The problems we were looking to solve were to have an immutable ledger that serves as the source of truth for all changes to the system. I also want a system that leverages eventual consistency to help create loose coupling between services and to have a higher system resiliency/disaster recovery. Some benefits I realized from Kafka/Confluent Cloud specifically are the power of KSQL, which essentially serves as an abstraction from a lot of the producer/consumer code you'd otherwise have to write in your application logic. It's incredibly powerful,and is drastically simpler to write than lambda/worker logic that you'd otherwise need to create. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: Seller invite ![Verified User in Information Technology and Services](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Information Technology and Services") UI Verified User in Information Technology and Services Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) 4/1/2023 "Best service of Kafka on cloud" 4/5 What do you like best about Confluent? Easy to use and easy to deploy. And also easy to learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? They should include more tutorial on website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? It is best solution for Stream processing and message queue Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Validated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: G2 invite ![Verified User in Retail](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Retail") ER Verified User in Retail Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.) 4/19/2022 "Confluent is a great platform, easy and fast up with speed" 5/5 What do you like best about Confluent? Making your data available in a modern, flexible and easy scalable solution. I like all connectors avilable and security features now and coming. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? A guidance of how to get up and running with confluent as code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Recommendations to others considering Confluent: Compare your internal knowledge in event programming, usage of connectors can be more costly and might need dedicated clustering. However if you have a single cloud environment it will be effective and easy to use. You will be up and running with your first cluster in no time. But remember to do your homework with a good event architecture and document your events in schemas, it will give you lots of benefits in the long run. I have used both opensource Apache Kafka and confluent cloud. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? Integration between our applications on different platforms and also making AI run as near as possible in realtime. These integrations makes us more productive and we have also been able to benefit from our events several times in new use cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. Show More Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: Seller invite ![Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain") AL Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) 4/7/2022 "Easiest way to get up running a fully featured kafka cluster" 4/5 What do you like best about Confluent? It requires just a few clicks to start a cluster. The documentation is very good. The support is reactive. It works exactly like a native kafka cluster expect it's fully managed so you don't have to maintain it and can concentrate on your application development. The sales team is also very nice. We were able to sign a contract that satisfy both of us to allow to grow on a multi-year basis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What do you dislike about Confluent? You have to be very careful with the pricing. Even if you don't send any data, you have to pay for the number of partitions you have. The price can go up quickly for just a few hundred partitions. The control center UI to visualize topic contents is not really good. You should consider using alternatives like Kowl which is much more performant and has a better UX. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. What problems is Confluent solving and how is that benefiting you? Several things : - We are streaming transactional changes between microservices applications (CDC using debezium) - We are processing IOT Data - We are processing and enriching data to integrate our applications with thirs parties Review collected by and hosted on G2.com. 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