Upgrading to 95.1
If you are using Kpow with a Google Managed Service for Apache Kafka (Google MSAK) cluster, you will now need to use either kpow-java17-gcp-standalone.jar or the 95.1-temurin-ubi tag of the factorhouse/kpow Docker image.

New Factor House brand: unified look across web, product, and docs

We've refreshed the Factor House brand across our website, documentation, the new license portal, and products to reflect where we are today: a company trusted by engineers running some of the world's most demanding data pipelines. Following our seed funding earlier this year, we've been scaling the team and product offerings to match the quality and value we deliver to enterprise engineers. The new brand brings our external presence in line with what we've built. You'll see updated logos in Kpow and Flex, refreshed styling across docs and the license portal, and a completely redesigned website with clearer navigation and information architecture. Your workflows stay exactly the same, and the result is better consistency across all touchpoints, making it easier for new users to evaluate our tools and for existing users to find what they need.

New license portal: self-service access for all users

We've rolled out our new license portal at account.factorhouse.io, to streamline license management for everyone. New users can instantly grab a Community or Trial license with just their email address, and existing users will see their migrated licenses when they log in. The portal lets you manage multiple licenses from one account, all through a clean, modern interface with magic link authentication. This could be upgrading from Community to a Trial, renewing your annual Community License, or requesting a trial extension. For installation and configuration guidance, check our Kpow and Flex docs.

Visit account.factorhouse.io to provision a community or trial license.

Unified community license for Kpow and Flex

We've consolidated our Community licensing into a single unified license that works with both Kpow Community Edition and Flex Community Edition. Your Community license allows you to run Kpow and Flex in up to three non-production environments each, making it easier to learn, test, and build with Kafka and Flink. The new licence streamlines management, providing a single key for both products and annual renewal via the licence portal. Perfect for exploring projects like Factor House Local or building your own data pipelines. Existing legacy licenses will continue to work and will also be accessible in the license portal.

Read more about the unified community licenses and inclusions.

Performance improvements

This release brings in a number of performance improvements to Kpow, Flex and Factor Platform. The work to compute and materialize views and insights about your Kafka or Flink resources has now been decreased by an order of magnitude. For our top-end customers we have observed a 70% performance increase in Kpow’s materialization.

Data Inspect enhancements

Confluent Data Rules support: Data inspect now supports Confluent Schema Registry Data Rules, including CEL, CEL_FIELD, and JSONata rule types. If you're using Data Contracts in Confluent Cloud, Data Inspect now accurately identifies rule failures and lets you filter them with kJQ.

Support for Avro Primitive Types: We’ve added support for Avro schemas that consist of a plain primitive type, including string, number, and boolean.

Schema Registry & navigation improvements

General Schema Registry improvements (from 94.6): In 94.6, we introduced improvements to Schema Registry performance and updated the observation engine. This release continues that work, with additional refinements based on real-world usage.

Karapace compatibility fix: We identified and fixed a regression in the new observation engine that affected Karapace users.

Redpanda Schema Registry note: The new observation engine is not compatible with Redpanda’s Schema Registry. Customers using Redpanda should set `OBSERVATION_VERSION=1` until full support is available.

Navigation improvements: Filters on the Schema Overview pages now persist when navigating into a subject and back.

Chart accessibility & UX improvements

This release brings a meaningful accessibility improvement to Kpow & Flex: Keyboard navigation for line charts. Users can now focus a line chart and use the left and right arrow keys to view data point tooltips. We plan to expand accessibility for charts to include bar charts and tree maps in the near future, bringing us closer to full WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance as reported in our Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).

We’ve also improved the UX of comparing adjacent line charts: Each series is now consistently coloured across different line charts on a page, making it easier to identify trends across a series, e.g., a particular topic’s producer write/s vs. consumer read/s.

These changes benefit everyone: developers using assistive technology, teams with accessibility requirements, and anyone who prefers keyboard navigation. Accessibility isn't an afterthought, it's a baseline expectation for enterprise-grade tooling, and we're committed to leading by example in the Kafka and Flink ecosystem.

View our VPAT documentation for 95.1.

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Release v95.1 Changelog

Kpow v95.1

Added

• GCP Integration
  • temurin-ubi build of Kpow now targets GCP MSAK.
  • Due to a bug in Google's GcpBearerAuthCredentialProvider disallowing multiple credential providers on the classpath at once, GCP functionality is provided in a separate build until resolved.
• Data Inspect
  • Data rule support for Confluent Schema Registry SerDes, supports CEL, CEL_FIELD, and JSONata data rules when querying for data
• ksqlDB
  • New KSQLDB_TIMEOUT_MS configuration option. Default=30s
• Access Control
  • Add ENABLE_INTERNAL_TENANT=false environment variable to control the visibility of Kpow’s hide internal resources tenant (simple access control only)

Changed

• Branding
  • Updated logos, icons, and favicons (light + dark mode) across Community Edition and Enterprise.
• Charts
  • Line charts now consistently colour a series across charts on the same page
  • Line charts now support keyboard interaction when focused (left and right arrow keys)
• Tables
  • Consistent alignment for readability. Numeric columns (and their headers) are now right-aligned, all other columns are left-aligned to better distinguish IDs/text from numbers
• Data Inspect
  • Updated the kJQ search keybinding to Cmd + Shift + F / Ctrl + Shift + F
• Connect
  • Improved usability & responsiveness of task stacktrace modal, and added new ‘copy to clipboard’ button
• Performance
  • Improved performance of core materialization engine. Larger deployments of Kpow should see significantly less CPU and memory pressure.

Fixed

• Schema Registry
  • Fixed a bug when observing Karapace Schema Registry schemas
  • Overview filters are now retained when you drill into a subject and navigate back
  • Added support for primitive type name Avro schemas (boolean, int, long, string)
• Metrics
  • Fixed a bug introduced in 94.6 where some aggregated metrics weren’t being published

Flex v95.1

Changed

• Branding
  • Updated logos, icons, and favicons (light + dark mode) across Community Edition and Enterprise.
• Charts
  • Line charts now consistently colour a series across charts on the same page
  • Line charts now support keyboard interaction when focused (left and right arrow keys).
• Tables
  • Consisent alignment for readability. Numeric columns (and their headers) are now right-aligned, all other columns are left-aligned to better distinguish IDs/text from numbers

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