Kpow Community Edition is a free, developer focused toolkit for Apache Kafka clusters, schema registries, and connect installations.
This is the original announcement post. For the current feature set, licence terms and download, see the Kpow Community Edition product page.
This may be the worst-kept secret in Kafka-tooling land because thousands of engineers are already using Kpow Community Edition.
After a soft launch at Current ’22, then a medium launch at Kafka Summit ’23, we’re making Kpow Community Edition generally available to everyone, everywhere.
Starting today, individuals can use Kpow Community Edition for free, even at work. Organisations can install Kpow Community Edition across up to three Apache Kafka clusters.
Each installation of Kpow Community Edition can manage one Kafka Cluster, one Schema Registry, and one Connect cluster. See our feature matrix for more information.
Kpow for Apache Kafka
Apache Kafka is a transformative technology, every engineer should have access to tooling that makes Kafka a joy.
Built on our learnings from a decade of shipping systems with Kafka, we believe Kpow is the most powerful and intuitive Kafka Web UI available to engineers today.
Designed for enterprise integration from our first commit in 2018, Kpow runs securely in your network with zero data egress and a full suite of user authentication and authorization features including SAML, LDAP, OpenID, OAuth2, Okta, Keycloak, RBAC, Multi-Tenancy, Data-Masking, Audit Logs, and more.
Five years, 10k commits, and more than 800k Docker pulls later, Kpow now has tens of thousands of users in 100+ countries. Our focus on quality tooling sees Kpow stacked with features and our commitment to performance means that one instance of Kpow can manage up to a dozen Kafka clusters and associated resources.
Explore the full feature-set of Kpow in our live, multi-cluster demo environment.
Kpow Community Edition
Kpow Community Edition is the free, light-weight version of Kpow that is packed with features to accelerate your Kafka experience (with none of the enterprise-y stuff, you know the drill).
If we have to give you one reason to install Kpow? Here it is..
Blazing Fast Multi-Topic Search!
Searching for data in Kafka can feel like trying to find the needle in a haystack. Kpow Community Edition makes topic search easy with built-in support for JSON Query (JQ) predicates, e.g:
.key.id | endswith("4d4a") and
.value.trade.status == "final" and
.value.trade.price | to-double > 25.45 and
.value.partner.network == "AMEX" and
.headers.flag[0] == "audit"Kpow’s multi-topic search easily scans tens of thousands of messages a second, finding the ones that match your JQ predicate in a flash.
Read more about Kpow’s implementation of JQ in our kJQ Documentation.
We model our company on JetBrains who make IntelliJ. They make phenomenal tools for engineers and they generally have the community version, which is really well featured and free.
Derek Troy-West, Co-founder and CEO of Factor House
Monitor, Control, and Explore
Kpow Community Edition covers the full surface area of Apache Kafka, from creating topics and resetting consumer group offsets to editing schema and restarting connectors.
Watch the Devoxx UK conference talk ‘Tune-Up your Kafka Tooling with Kpow Community’ and discover how to:
- Set up Kpow Community Edition with a Kafka Cluster, Schema Registry, and Kafka Connect. [3:00]
- Skip the setup wizard and run Kpow Community Edition with environment variables. [4:19]
- Learn how Kpow generates unique metrics and insights while running airgapped and secure. [6:45]
- Diagnose the root cause of production lag issues with multi-dimensional consumer metrics. [11:30]
- Skip poison-pill messages and recompute topics with consumer offset management. [13:30]
- Manage and monitor Kafka Connect clusters and schema registries. [15:22]
- Find needle-in-a-haystack messages with blazing-fast multi-topic search and built in JQ predicates. [16:46]
- Blend Clojure and JQ to make quick assertions about topic data with the kREPL. [22:18]
Tune-Up your Kafka Tooling!
Kpow Community Edition works with any Kafka cluster v1.0.0+ including Confluent Cloud and Platform, AWS MSK, MSK Serverless, Redpanda, and clusters from providers like Aiven and Instaclustr. Supported resource integrations include Confluent Schema Registry, AWS Glue, Apache Kafka Connect, Confluent Managed Connect, and MSK Connect.
The install is a single multi-arch Docker container and a setup wizard, or environment variables if you would rather skip the wizard. The current install steps, supported integrations and licence terms all live on the Kpow Community Edition product page, and the configuration guide covers the environment variables in full.
We hope you find Kpow Community Edition useful. If you encounter any problems or technical questions just raise an issue on the Kpow Github repository.
Interested in a commercial license? Contact us any time to discuss requirements and start a POC.
Derek Troy-West is a Co-Founder and CEO of Factor House.
Factor House build essential tools for modern engineers.
For the broader context on operating Kafka, see the complete guide to Kafka.