Redpanda vs ksqlDB

Side-by-side comparison of Redpanda and ksqlDB to help you choose the right tool.

Feature	Redpanda	ksqlDB
Pricing	Free / Usage-based	Free / Included with Confluent
Rating	⭐ 4.6/5	⭐ 4.3/5
Categories	streaming	streaming
Kafka API compatible	✅	❌
No ZooKeeper	✅	❌
Low latency	✅	❌
Schema Registry	✅	❌
HTTP proxy	✅	❌
WebAssembly transforms	✅	❌
SQL on Kafka	❌	✅
Materialized views	❌	✅
Pull & push queries	❌	✅
Connectors	❌	✅
Windowing	❌	✅
User-defined functions	❌	✅

Kafka-compatible streaming platform

Try Redpanda →

Event streaming database for Kafka

Try ksqlDB →