Manage Billing in Confluent Cloud

Confluent Cloud bills are based on the consumption of resources within your cloud organization. This includes the total amount of data transferred in and out of your cluster, and request overhead associated with the Kafka protocol.

You can either pay as you go or make an annual commitment. Discounts based on usage are available with annual commitments. For more billing and pricing details, see the PRICING tab in the Cluster Details section of the Confluent Cloud Pricing page.

Billing for each Confluent Cloud component accrues at hourly intervals. Any usage that is less than an hour is billed for the full hour. All billing computations are conducted in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). To view billing information, log into Confluent Cloud and visit the Billing & payment screen.

Important

Billing accrues hourly, with a monthly-in-arrears invoicing cycle. If you deprovision resources that have accrued billed usage during the current month, billing will no longer accrue for these resources, but billed usage accrued so far in the invoicing cycle will appear on your next invoice.

You can sign up for the pay-as-you go billing model directly from Confluent, or you can sign up with your cloud provider to pay via your cloud provider billing account. Confluent Cloud billing integrates with Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services.

Note that the Confluent Cloud Console displays your usage as it occurs, but your cloud provider may not show billed usage for Confluent Cloud until 6-24 hours from when the usage occurred.

Annual commitments

Confluent Cloud offers the ability to make a commitment to a minimum amount of spend over a specified time period. This commitment gives you access to discounts and provides the flexibility to use this commitment across the entire Confluent Cloud stack, including any Kafka cluster type, ksqlDB on Confluent Cloud, Connectors, and Support.

With annual commitments you can view the total amount of accrued usage during the commitment term and the amount of time left on your commitment.

If you use more than your committed amount, you can continue using Confluent Cloud without interruption. You will be charged at your discounted rate for usage beyond the committed amount until the end of your commitment term. Commitments are minimums, and there is no negative impact to exceeding your committed usage. If you exceed this minimum, overage charges will be billed to the payment method set for your organization.

Contact Confluent to learn more about annual commitments, or review these topics:

• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the AWS Marketplace with Commitments
• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Commitments
• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the GCP Marketplace with Commitments

Pay as you go

With the Pay As You Go billing model you can sign up and pay monthly in arrears. If you sign up for Confluent Cloud directly through Confluent, your Organization will be on the Pay As You Go billing model by default.

The Pay As You Go billing model is also available on the Confluent Cloud Marketplace channels. For more information on the cloud provider Marketplace integrations, see:

• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the AWS Marketplace with Pay As You Go
• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the Azure Marketplace with Pay As You Go
• Get Started with Confluent Cloud on the GCP Marketplace with Pay As You Go

Billing profile and payment

Use the Confluent Cloud Console to manage your bill and obtain information about your organization.

Important

If your organization is using RBAC, then only users who are assigned the OrganizationAdmin role can view the Billing & payment screen. For details, refer to Confluent Cloud RBAC roles.

Billing profile

Use your billing profile to update your payment method, redeem a promotion, or view and download invoices. Your billing profile also includes the following information:

• Cloud Organization ID
• Billing information
• Payment method
• Address for tax purposes
• Invoices to view and download

To view your billing profile:

1. Sign in to your Confluent Cloud account.

2. From the Administration menu, select Billing & payment

   

3. Then select the Payment details & contacts tab.

   

You can use all major credit cards, add a bank for electronic fund transfers, or bill through the marketplace of your provider. To switch to invoicing, contact the Confluent sales team. Invoicing requires a minimum annual commitment.

Important

Prepaid cards are not supported for Confluent Cloud billing.

Credit card payment receipts or invoices are emailed to the address that was initially provided during sign up for Confluent Cloud. To change the billing email address, see Manage your payment method.

The invoice can only be sent to a single email address.

Manage your payment method

Payment methods include:

• Credit cards
• Banks (for direct fund transfers)
• Cloud providers (link your Confluent billing to your cloud provider)

If you choose to bill through your cloud provider, your provider bills you for the Confluent resources you use.

Tip

To continue using Confluent Cloud after your free promotion, you must add a payment method.

To add a payment method:

1. Sign in to your Confluent Cloud account.

2. Open the Administration menu in the upper right, select Billing and payment, and then the Payment details and contacts page.

3. Click Enter Payment.

4. Choose Credit Card/Bank or a cloud provider to link your billing.

   Consider the following:

   • For providers, verify the provider account you want to link meets the listed requirements and follow the prompts to add the provider as a payment method.
   • For credit cards, enter the required information and click Save.
   • For banks, enter the required information and click Continue. Read and follow the Stripe prompts to link the bank to your Confluent account. After you link the bank, click Save. US bank accounts only.

Tip

If you don’t see your cloud provider listed, use the marketplace of the cloud provider you want to use for billing to add a payment method. For more information, see Pay as you go.

To change your credit card or billing email address:

1. Sign in to your Confluent Cloud account.
2. Open the Administration menu in the upper right, select Billing and payment, and then the Payment details and contacts page.
3. Click Change and enter the required information. Note that you cannot use a prepaid credit card and you must use a valid email address.
4. Click Save.

You can also contact your account team to change your email.

Redeem a promo code or view balance

If you have a promotional code for Confluent Cloud, you can use one of the following options to claim the code:

• Redeem a code when you create a new cluster. On the New cluster screen, after you click Continue, enter the promotional code before you click Launch.

  

• View your promotional balance or redeem a promo code using the Confluent Cloud Console or the Confluent CLI.

  Cloud ConsoleConfluent CLI

  1. Navigate to the Payment details & contacts tab on the Billing & payment page.
  2. View your existing promotional balance.
  3. To add a new promo code, click + Promo code.

Retrieve invoices and costs

Use the Confluent Cloud Console to manage view or download invoices. Use the Cost API to get your costs for a range of dates.

View or download invoices

You can view or download current and past monthly invoices using Confluent Cloud Console. For information about line items on your invoice, see Billing dimensions.

Requirements

• You must be a member of the OrganizationAdmin role.

To view an invoice:

1. Log in to your Confluent Cloud account.

2. Open the Administration menu in the upper right, select Billing and payments.

3. From Billing, either view the current month/year, or select a month and year.

   

4. Choose an environment.

   A billing statement appears that identifies a resource, usage and cost per unit for that environment.

To download an invoice:

1. Log in to your Confluent Cloud account.

2. Open the Administration menu in the upper right, select Billing and payments.

3. From Billing, select the desired month and year.

4. Click the download icon:

   A CSV file downloads containing the billing details for the month/year selected and the Confluent Cloud Organization ID as the file name.

Retrieve costs for a range of dates

Use the Costs API to get your costs for a specific range of dates.

Considerations:

• You must be a member of the OrganizationAdmin role
• Use UTC time for dates with the Cost API
• You must specify a start date (inclusive) and end date (exclusive) as strings in this format: yyyy-mm-dd
• Cost data can take up to 72 hours to become available
• Start date can reach a maximum of one year into the past
• One month is the maximum window between start and end dates
• The Cost API aggregates all line values at a daily level

Note

For accuracy, Confluent recommends using a start_date that is 72 hours or greater than the current date.

Request

GET /v1/costs?start_date={yyyy-mm-dd}&end_date={yyyy-mm-dd}
Host: api.confluent.cloud

Response

Highlighted lines indicate the range of dates from your request and total costs.

{
   "api_version": "v1",
   "kind": "CostList",
   "metadata": {
      "first": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v1/costs",
      "last": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v1/costs?page_token=bcAOehAY8F16YD84Z1wT",
      "prev": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v1/costs?page_token=YIXRY97wWYmwzrax4dld",
      "next": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v1/costs?page_token=UvmDWOB1iwfAIBPj6EYb",
      "total_size": 123
   },
   "data": [
      {
      "api_version": "v1",
      "kind": "Cost",
      "id": "dlz-f3a90de",
      "metadata": {
         "self": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v1/costs/c-12345",
         "resource_name": "crn://confluent.cloud/organization=9bb441c4-edef-46ac-8a41-c49e44a3fd9a/cost=c-12345",
         "created_at": "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00",
         "updated_at": "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00",
         "deleted_at": "2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00"
      },
      "start_date": "2022-10-12",
      "end_date": "2022-10-15",
      "granularity": "DAILY",
      "network_access_type": "INTERNET",
      "product": "KAFKA",
      "line_type": "KAFKA_NUM_CKUS",
      "resource_name": "prod_cluster_1",
      "price": 1.5,
      "unit": "GB",
      "quantity": 99.95,
      "original_amount": 99.95,
      "discount_amount": 20.95,
      "amount": 79,
      "environment": {
         "id": "env-00000",
         "environment": "string",
         "related": "https://api.confluent.cloud/v2/environments/env-00000",
         "resource_name": "https://api.confluent.cloud/organization=9bb441c4-edef-46ac-8a41-c49e44a3fd9a/environment=env-00000"
      },
      "resource": {
         "id": "lkc-c29js0",
         "environment": "string",
         "related": "https://api.confluent.cloud/cmk/v2/clusters/lkc-c29js0",
         "resource_name": "https://api.confluent.cloud/organization=9bb441c4-edef-46ac-8a41-c49e44a3fd9a/environment=env-abc123/cloud-cluster=lkc-c29js0",
         "api_version": "string",
         "kind": "string"
      }
      }
   ]
}

For more information, see Costs API.

Billing dimensions

Confluent Cloud offers multiple Kafka cluster types. Billing dimensions vary by cluster type. To stop your Kafka clusters from accruing billed usage, you can delete your clusters in the Confluent Cloud Console, or use the Confluent CLI.

Dimension summary

Clusters are billed based on the dimensions listed in the following tables.

Important

Confluent storage and throughput is calculated in binary gigabytes (GB), where 1 GB is 2 ³⁰ bytes. This unit of measurement is also known as a gibibyte (GiB).

Basic clusters

The following table summarizes the billing dimensions for Basic clusters. The following sections contain more details for some of the billing dimensions.

Dimension	Unit of measure
Ingress	Cost per GB written per hour
Egress	Cost per GB read per hour
Storage	Cost per GB stored per hour
Partitions	Cost per partition per hour
Managed connectors and custom connectors	Cost per task per hour and throughput
ksqlDB	Cost per Confluent Streaming Unit (CSU)
Cluster Linking	Cost per hour & data sent/received

Standard clusters

The following table summarizes the billing dimensions for Standard clusters. The following sections contain more details for some of the billing dimensions.

Dimension	Unit of measure
Base price	Cost per hour
Ingress	Cost per GB written per hour
Egress	Cost per GB read per hour
Storage	Cost per GB stored per hour
Partitions	Cost per partition per hour
Managed connectors and custom connectors	Cost per task per hour and throughput
ksqlDB	Cost per Confluent Streaming Unit (CSU)
Cluster Linking	Cost per hour & data sent/received
Connector events and audit log	Cost per GB of data read

Dedicated clusters

The following table summarizes the billing dimensions for Dedicated clusters. The following sections contain more details for some of the billing dimensions.

Dimension	Unit of measure
CKU price	Cost per CKU per hour
Ingress	Cost per GB written per hour
Egress	Cost per GB read per hour
Storage	Cost per GB stored per hour
Managed connectors and custom connectors	Cost per task per hour and throughput
ksqlDB	Cost per Confluent Streaming Unit (CSU)
Cluster Linking	Cost per hour & data sent/received
Connector events and audit log	Cost per GB of data read

Storage

Confluent Cloud charges for the total post-replication volume of data stored on a given Kafka cluster. Because Confluent Cloud has a built-in replication factor of three, the amount of data stored on a cluster typically exceeds the volume of data written to the cluster. This replication ensures high availability, and is not configurable. To reduce storage usage, you can configure the retention.bytes and retention.ms on a topic. To learn more, see Topic Settings and Edit a Topic.

Partitions

Confluent Cloud charges for partitions on Basic and Standard clusters. You are charged for the number of unique partitions that exist on your cluster during a given hour.

• Basic clusters receive 10 partitions free of charge.
• Standard clusters receive 500 partitions free of charge.
• Dedicated clusters have no partition-based charges.

For billing purposes, partitions for topics that you create and partitions for internal topics are counted. Internal topics are topics that are automatically created by Confluent components such as ksqlDB, Kafka Streams, and Connect, and prefixed with an underscore (_). Partitions for topics that are internal to Kafka itself and are not visible in the Cloud Console, such as consumer offsets, , do not count against partition limits or toward partition billing.

Cluster Linking

A cluster link sends data from a “source cluster” to a “destination cluster”. The destination cluster must be a Dedicated Confluent Cloud cluster with internet networking, as described in Supported Cluster Types for Cluster Linking.

Confluent Cloud clusters that use Cluster Linking are charged based on the number of cluster links and the volume of mirroring throughput to or from the cluster. A detailed breakdown for Cluster Linking billing is provided below.

Dimension	Unit of measure	Details
Cluster link	Cost per link per hour	$0.25 / hour per cluster link for Confluent Cloud clusters with internet endpoints, and $0.50/hour for privately networked Confluent Cloud clusters. A cluster is charged for all cluster links for which it is a source or destination. If a given cluster link connects two Confluent Cloud clusters, then both the source and the destination cluster will be charged their respective hourly rates for that cluster link. If a cluster link connects a Confluent Cloud cluster with a cluster outside of Confluent Cloud, only the Confluent Cloud cluster is charged its hourly cluster link price. A cluster link must be created by a Confluent Cloud user. It contains a source cluster, a destination cluster, and security credentials. You can have an unlimited number of mirror topics on a cluster link. It is possible to create multiple cluster links with the same source cluster, destination cluster, and security configuration. Confluent does not de-duplicate these links. Confluent Cloud charges for all cluster link objects, even if there is not a mirror topic or data throughput on the cluster link at a given point in time.
Ingress (ClusterLinkingWrite)	Cost per GB written per hour	There is a per GB cost for all data that a Confluent Cloud cluster receives over a cluster link. It is charged at the same price as the cluster’s price for Kafka ingress (KafkaNetworkWrite). If you use Cluster Linking between two Confluent Cloud clusters, then you will not be charged by a cloud provider for this ingress. You are not charged for Kafka ingress (KafkaNetworkWrite) in addition to the Cluster Linking ingress (ClusterLinkingWrite).
Egress (ClusterLinkingRead)	Cost per GB read per hour	$0.25/GB for all data (including metadata) that a Confluent Cloud cluster sends over a cluster link. You are not charged by a cloud provider for this egress; Confluent pays the cloud provider egress. You are not charged for Kafka egress (KafkaNetworkRead) in addition to the Cluster Linking egress (ClusterLinkingRead). Note: Volume discounts are available. Contact your Confluent Cloud account team to find out more.

Note

If a source cluster or destination cluster is not a Confluent Cloud cluster, then that cluster will not accrue any charges.

Regional multiplier

Every Confluent Cloud cluster has a regional multiplier depending on its region and cloud provider. This regional multiplier is applied to the base prices. For example, a cluster in AWS in us-east-1 has a 1x regional multiplier, so its Cluster Linking per link price is the base $0.25. A GCP cluster in asia-east2 has a 1.2x regional multiplier, so its Cluster Linking per link price will be $0.25 * 1.2 = $0.30.

Metadata syncs

In addition to the data produced to source topics as “messages”, Cluster Linking also syncs metadata such as topic configurations, consumer group offsets, and ACLs. Cluster Linking charges for this metadata at the same rate as topic message data. Therefore, the total throughput for a cluster link may be larger than the sum of the produce throughput produced into source topics.

To measure the amount of metadata throughput, subtract the metric that only accounts for topic data (io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_link_mirror_topic_bytes) from the metric that accounts for all cluster link data (io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_link_destination_response_bytes).

Using the Metrics API to monitor billable metrics

Each line item has a corresponding metric in the Confluent Cloud Metrics:

Line Item	Metric
ClusterLinkingPerLink	io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_active_link_count
ClusterLinkRead	io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_link_source_response_bytes
ClusterLinkWrite	io.confluent.kafka.server/cluster_link_destination_response_bytes

Examples

The examples below are for clusters with internet networking only. Examples of private networked clusters will be provided in later versions of this documentation.

One cluster link in an active-passive setup

In this example, you have one cluster link between a Source cluster and a Destination cluster.

The source cluster is charged $0.25 per hour and $0.25 per GB.

The destination cluster is charged $0.25 per hour and $0.01 per GB, because the cluster’s KafkaNetworkWrite cost is $0.01 per GB.

Two cluster links in an active-active setup

In this example, you have two clusters with two cluster links between them: one in each direction.

Each cluster is charged $0.50 per hour (2 x $0.25).

Each cluster is charged $0.25 per GB that it sends over a cluster link.

The left cluster is charged $0.04 per GB for data it receives on a cluster link, because that is its KafkaNetworkWrite price.

The right cluster is charged $0.01 per GB for data it receives on a cluster link, because that is its KafkaNetworkWrite price.

Hybrid cloud or migration with one link writing to a Confluent Cloud cluster

In this example, you have an external source cluster, which is not a Confluent Cloud cluster, with one cluster link sending data to a Confluent Cloud cluster.

The Confluent Cloud cluster is charged $0.25 per hour and $0.01 per GB, because that is its KafkaNetworkWrite price.

The external cluster does not accrue Confluent Cloud charges. If the external cluster is hosted in a public cloud provider, it may be charged an egress fee to send data to Confluent Cloud.

Managed connectors and custom connectors

Review the following billing information for managed connectors and custom connectors.

Note

Custom connectors get billed similarly to managed Connect. However, Confluent allocates 2 GB of memory for a custom connector. This memory allocation cannot be changed.

Managed Connect cluster

If you use a dedicated cluster, connectors on Confluent Cloud run on your own dedicated Connect cluster. Confluent Cloud provisions the dedicated Connect cluster when you launch your first connecter. If you use a Basic or Standard Kafka cluster, your connector runs in multitenant Kafka Connect clusters. For the connectors running on a multitenant Connect cluster, there is no Connect capacity (ConnectCapacity) charge.

If you pause a managed connector, tasks will be paused, which means message processing is also paused until the connector is restarted. However, the connector is still active and hourly base costs for tasks assigned to the connector continue to accrue. To stop your Connect connectors from accruing billed usage, you can delete them in the Confluent Cloud Console, or use the Confluent CLI.

The dedicated cluster and fully-managed connectors are billed based on the following dimensions. For Custom Connector billing details, see Custom connector cluster.

Dimension	Unit of measure
Dedicated cluster	Cost per hour
Task base price	Cost per task per hour
Throughput	Cost per GB written or read per hour

Fully-managed connector pricing is displayed in the Add Connector screen:

Dedicated connect cluster hourly pricing is shown on the Review and launch screen the first time you launch a connector.

Dedicated cluster billing is shown as a line item on the Billing & payment > Billing screen.

Self-managed connectors have no billing mechanism themselves. However, note that using self-managed connectors may incur ingress, egress, and storage charges for your Kafka clusters running in Confluent Cloud.

Custom connector cluster

Custom connectors are supported on Basic, Standard, and Dedicated clusters. Your custom cluster is billed based on the following dimensions:

Dimension	Unit of measure
Task base price	Cost per task per hour
Throughput	Cost per GB written or read per hour

Note

• Customers are responsible for all charges related to using the app log topic with a custom connector.
• Customers will incur some throughput charges while using APIs, CLIs, and the UI to access logs data stored in the apps log topic.
• There is a 750 Mbps throughput limit.

ksqlDB

Fully-managed ksqlDB is billed based on the following dimension:

Dimension	Unit of measure
Confluent Streaming Unit	Cost per Confluent Streaming Unit per hour

In addition to the per-Confluent Streaming Unit charge, ksqlDB applications may influence Kafka ingress, egress, and storage.

Fully-managed ksqlDB pricing is displayed in the Add an Application screen:

To stop your ksqlDB application from accruing billing, you can delete your application in the Confluent Cloud Console, or use the Confluent CLI to delete your application.

Connector events and audit log

Dimension	Unit of measure
Confluent Streaming Unit	Cost per GB of data read from audit log topics

Connector events and audit logging operate from the Audit Log cluster. Consumption charges for both connector events and audit logging are combined on your bill.

For detailed price information, see Audit log pricing.

Support

Support plans are available for purchase from the Confluent Cloud Console at https://confluent.cloud/support-plans. From this page, you can view your current plan or choose a different plan. If you have an annual commitment, support charges contribute to your total committed spend amount.

Support charges accrue hourly for as long as the support plan is active.

Important

Downgrade restrictions apply to support plan purchases. Your current support level will stay in effect until the end of the current calendar month. However, if you downgrade within the month of purchase, your current support plan level is maintained until the end of the next full calendar month.