Redpanda Has a Free Streaming Platform — Kafka-Compatible Without the JVM Overhead

Redpanda is a Kafka-compatible streaming data platform written in C++ — no JVM, no ZooKeeper.

What You Get for Free

• Kafka API compatible — use existing Kafka clients, no code changes
• No JVM — C++ with thread-per-core, predictable latency
• No ZooKeeper — built-in Raft consensus
• Single binary — simple deployment
• Schema Registry — built-in, Confluent-compatible
• HTTP Proxy — produce/consume via REST API
• Transforms — inline data transformations (WASM)
• Console — web UI for topic management
• Redpanda Cloud — free tier with 1GB throughput

Quick Start

# Docker
docker run -d --name redpanda -p 9092:9092 -p 8082:8082 \
  docker.redpanda.com/redpandadata/redpanda:latest \
  redpanda start --smp 1 --memory 1G

# Use any Kafka client — same API
kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --create --topic my-topic
kafka-console-producer.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:9092 --topic my-topic

Why Teams Switch from Kafka

Kafka needs JVM tuning, ZooKeeper, and a DevOps team:

• 10x simpler — single binary, no ZooKeeper, no JVM
• Lower latency — C++ with thread-per-core architecture
• Less memory — no JVM garbage collection pauses
• Kafka compatible — zero code changes to migrate

A platform team spent 20% of their time tuning Kafka JVM settings and managing ZooKeeper. They migrated to Redpanda — same Kafka API, same clients, but operations went from weekly fire-drills to set-and-forget.

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