Apache Kafka Deserves Topic Types
Luckily, in Kafka cache invalidation is not an issue, but we still need to name things. Let me tell you a story about naming things in Kafka.
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What 16,808 Kafka Clusters Tell Us About Data Streaming
Half a year ago, we launched a free tier cloud Kafka. We have 16,808 clusters so we got curious: what are these builders telling us about the state of Apache Kafka? The headlines this quarter suggest Kafka is dying because the streaming market is consolidating. At Aiven we see the opposite. Kafka is not shrinking. It is spreading outward from enterprise platform teams into the hands of individual builders. We are now seeing >200 new Kafka clusters created per day on the free tier.
Building for the 80%: The New Developer Tier for Apache Kafka
When we launched the Free Tier, we made a promise: graduating to a paid tier shouldn’t feel like switching platforms. It should simply feel like tapping “Continue watching in HD”. The Developer Tier for Aiven for Apache Kafka is that upgrade. $35 a month for the serious, ongoing workloads that haven’t yet reached enterprise scale. Everything we said was coming is now live.
Get Kafka-Nated S2E4: Debugging the Kafka-Iceberg Connector
In this episode of Get Kafka-Nated, host Hugh is joined by Anatolii Popov, Senior Software Engineer at Aiven, to dive into one of the most talked-about integrations in the modern data stack: Kafka to Apache Iceberg. Anatolii was accepted to speak at Iceberg Summit 2026 on debugging the Kafka Connect Iceberg Connector, and in this session we’ll cover the talk he would have given, including common failure modes, debugging locally, catalog complexities, and where the integration is heading next.
The Art of Scaling: How to Determine the Right Number of Apache Kafka Partitions
Apache Kafka partition count isn't just a number—it defines parallelism, ordering, and operational complexity. Learn the formula to balance throughput requirements with maintenance costs, avoid common anti-patterns, and find your 'Goldilocks' number for production-ready performance.
Beyond the Queue: Modernizing Legacy Middleware with Apache Kafka 4.x
Apache Kafka 4.x eliminates the final barriers to legacy middleware modernization. With KRaft mode removing ZooKeeper dependency and native queue semantics bridging the gap, enterprises can finally transition from point-to-point messaging to event-driven architectures.
The Future of Kafka and Steaming
Join Jeff Mery and Josep Prat as they discuss the future of Kafka and Streaming. In this deep dive, we break down the architectural shifts and hidden "taxes" currently hitting the data streaming ecosystem—and how to engineer your way out of them. In this video, you’ll see: The "Streaming Tax" Breakdown: A transparent look at how 3x replication, inter-AZ egress, and eCKU markups are inflating your TCO by up to 500%.
What does the IBM acquisition of Confluent mean for the future of streaming and Kafka?
On December 8th, 2025, IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Confluent in a deal valued at $11 billion. It is a massive moment for our industry. The acquisition was finalized on March 17th, 2026. For some, this looks like a safe bet; a way for enterprise giants to finally "get" real-time data. But for those of us who have spent our careers in open source software and data infrastructure, it feels different. There’s a sense of wondering “when is the other shoe going to drop?”.
Deterministic Simulation Testing in Diskless Apache Kafka
Aiven put Diskless Kafka through 2,200 logical hours of chaos testing using Antithesis. Here's how it held up. Testing is a necessary pillar in any software development lifecycle. At the same time, it's a fundamentally incomplete process - a cat-and-mouse game. You can't test what you can't imagine and distributed systems have a nasty habit of producing failures that no one on the team imagined.
Free Tier Kafka Competition: The Winners
After reviewing all the submissions, we realised we could not have chosen just one winner. When we launched Aiven's Free Tier Kafka competition with a $5,000 prize pool, we wanted to see what the community could build. What we got back was incredible: genuine creativity, technical depth, and projects that are truly inspiring to the Apache Kafka community. After reviewing all the submissions, we realized we could not have chosen just one winner.