Best Kafka management tools for Confluent Platform
ComparisonsThe best Kafka management tool for Confluent Platform is one that connects to Confluent Server with the cluster’s own Kerberos, SCRAM, OAuth or mTLS settings, works with Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, adds what Confluent RBAC does not (production access granted on request and expiring, approvals, masking and an audit trail that names the person), manages Confluent Cloud or open-source Kafka clusters from the same deployment, and runs as one container in your own environment that stays out of the data path. Kpow, Kafbat UI, AKHQ, Lenses, Confluent Control Center and Conduktor each cover part of that. Scored on the six weighted criteria explained below the rankings, Kpow ranks first with 89 out of 100, ahead of Kafbat UI at 65 and AKHQ at 59; Conduktor, listed last, totals 63.
Tools compared
| Rank | Tool | Total (out of 100) | Out of the data path | Production access on request | Audit trail per person | Confluent Platform components | Directory and Kafka sign-in | On-prem and cloud together | Cost a year, 3 clusters (modelled) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kpow | 89 | One container, state in your Kafka, not a proxy | Time-boxed temporary policies via API, staged approvals, masking per resource | Every action with the IdP user, data queries included | Schema Registry, Connect, ksqlDB, Streams via agent | SAML, OIDC, LDAP; Kerberos, SCRAM, OAuth or mTLS to brokers | Any distribution, 12 clusters per instance | $16,380 |
| 2 | Kafbat UI | 65 | One stateless container | Per-resource RBAC, no approvals, masking for all viewers | Optional, reads at level ALL, no view | Schema Registry, Connect, basic ksqlDB | OAuth2, OIDC, LDAP; no SAML | Confluent Cloud broke in v1.4.x and v1.5.0 | $8,640 |
| 3 | AKHQ | 59 | One stateless container | Regex groups, UI-only if JWT secret unset | Opt-in, no reads, no view | Schema Registry, Connect, basic ksqlDB | LDAP, OIDC; no SAML | Named connections | $8,640 |
| 4 | Lenses | 56 | HQ on PostgreSQL, agent and database per cluster | Strict global masking, no approvals | In-product audit log from Team tier | Schema Registry, Connect; own SQL, ksqlDB not listed | SSO incl. Entra ID and Okta | Any Kafka API, agent per cluster | $2,880 plus quoted licence |
| 5 | Confluent Control Center | 47 | Dedicated host, broker reporter JAR | Confluent RBAC, no DENY, no approvals | Broker principal, not always the person | Native view of every Confluent component | OIDC on self-managed | Confluent Platform only | $2,880 plus quoted subscription |
| 6 | Conduktor | 63 | Console on PostgreSQL; Gateway proxy in the data path | Per-viewer masking, cross-team access requests | 70+ event types with user, in the UI | Schema Registry, Connect, ksqlDB | LDAP, OIDC | Confluent Cloud, Aiven, MSK, Cloudera | $62,880, or $122,880 with Gateway |
No tool meets every column, and teams on Confluent Platform commonly keep Confluent RBAC or ACLs for services and use a management tool to govern people.
The tools, ranked for Confluent Platform
Rank 1 Kpow
89 out of 100 Total
Try Kpow in the live demo No signup needed.
- Cost a year
- $13,500 licence for 3 clusters plus $2,880 operator time, so $16,380 (modelled)
- Confluent components
- Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB, Kafka Streams
- Deployment
- One container or JAR, no external database
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 9 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 8 out of 10
Why these scores for Kpow
- Out of the data path 9 out of 10
- It is one container or JAR whose state lives in Kafka topics on your own cluster, and it connects as an ordinary Kafka client, so nothing sits between your applications and the brokers and nothing is installed on them.
- Production access on request 9 out of 10
- Temporary policies grant time-boxed access that an admin or a change system calling the Kpow API can create, staged mutations hold any action for approval, and data policies mask fields in inspection, though masking is per resource rather than per viewer.
- Audit trail per person 9 out of 10
- Every action is recorded with the user from the identity provider and the policy that allowed it, including data inspect queries, with a seven-day view in the product and long-term retention on your own audit topic or SIEM.
- Confluent Platform components 9 out of 10
- It connects to Confluent Schema Registry with basic auth, mTLS or OAuth, handles schema references and data rules, manages several Connect clusters per Kafka cluster with automatic restarts, and manages ksqlDB and shows Kafka Streams topologies through its Streams Agent; ksqlDB and Streams are Enterprise features and the agent goes into each Streams application, which keeps it below Control Center’s native view.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 9 out of 10
- People sign in with SAML, OpenID or LDAP through Jetty JAAS, and Kpow connects to brokers with any SASL mechanism, GSSAPI by default, or SSL.
- On-prem and cloud together 8 out of 10
- One deployment manages self-managed Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Confluent Cloud and MSK together, capped at 12 clusters per instance before you run another.
On Confluent Platform. Confluent Platform is on Kpow’s tested-compatible list, and its Confluent Platform guide runs Kpow beside a full stack of broker, Schema Registry, Kafka Connect and ksqlDB in Docker Compose, with OAuth and OIDC also supported for authentication. Kpow connects to Schema Registry, Kafka Connect and ksqlDB over their REST APIs, several of each per Kafka cluster. It added the Kafka Streams UI in release 80, full Confluent schema references in release 93.3, and Confluent Schema Registry data rules (CEL, CEL_FIELD and JSONata) in data inspect in release 95.1.
Where it falls short. Kpow governs people working through Kpow. Applications still authenticate to Confluent Server with their own principals, so Confluent RBAC or ACLs remain the control for services, and Confluent RBAC role bindings are managed in Confluent’s own tools. Kafka Streams topologies appear only for applications that include the Kpow Streams Agent. Masking is set per resource, not per viewer. RBAC, masking, tenants, ksqlDB, Streams and the audit log need Kpow Enterprise; Community Edition is free for 3 clusters and 10 users.
Cost a year. $16,380 on this page’s model of 3 clusters (development, test and production) for 50 engineers. Kpow Enterprise is published at $4,500 per cluster per year with 100 users included, so the licence is $13,500, and the model adds 2 engineer-hours a month at $120 an hour, $2,880, to run one container and keep it current. The licence includes 100 users, so on this model headcount does not change the bill.
Rank 2 Kafbat UI
65 out of 100 Total
- Cost a year
- $0 licence, about $8,640 in operator time (modelled)
- Confluent components
- Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, basic ksqlDB
- Deployment
- One stateless container
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 6 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 7 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 7 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 6 out of 10
Why these scores for Kafbat UI
- Out of the data path 9 out of 10
- It is one stateless container with no database and no proxy, the same pass as Kpow.
- Production access on request 4 out of 10
- RBAC grants actions per resource and a cluster can be set read-only, but there is no approval step, no time-boxed grant, and its masking applies the same way to every viewer.
- Audit trail per person 6 out of 10
- Its audit log names the logged-in user and records reads when the level is set to ALL, but it writes to a topic or the console with no view in the product, so reading the trail is something you build.
- Confluent Platform components 7 out of 10
- The Kafbat UI review records Schema Registry with Avro, Protobuf and JSON Schema, Kafka Connect connector and task management, and basic ksqlDB, and no Kafka Streams view.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 7 out of 10
- It supports OAuth2 and OIDC, including Microsoft Entra ID, and LDAP or Active Directory, and its documentation does not list SAML.
- On-prem and cloud together 6 out of 10
- It covers self-managed Kafka, MSK and other managed services, but Confluent Cloud connectivity broke in v1.4.x and v1.5.0.
On Confluent Platform. Kafbat UI is the maintained open-source fork of the original kafka-ui, Apache 2.0, and the Kafbat UI review lists the Confluent pieces it covers: Schema Registry with Avro, Protobuf and JSON Schema deserialisation, Kafka Connect with connector and task management, and basic ksqlDB. RBAC, server-side masking and an optional audit log are free.
Where it falls short. There is no way to grant production access for an hour and have it expire, no approval before a change runs, and masking cannot exempt the team that owns the data. Its last release, v1.5.0, shipped in April 2026, and there is no vendor under contract to ship the next fix. Its modelled running cost is 6 engineer-hours a month, $8,640 a year at $120 an hour.
Compare Confluent Control Center vs Kafbat UIKafbat UI review
Rank 3 AKHQ
59 out of 100 Total
- Cost a year
- $0 licence, about $8,640 in operator time (modelled)
- Confluent components
- Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, basic ksqlDB
- Deployment
- One stateless container
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 9 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 3 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 7 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 6 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 7 out of 10
Why these scores for AKHQ
- Out of the data path 9 out of 10
- It is one stateless container with no database and no proxy, the same pass as Kpow.
- Production access on request 3 out of 10
- Groups bind actions to resources by regex, but there is no approval step or time-boxed grant, masking is global, and without the JWT signing secret the restriction is in the UI only.
- Audit trail per person 4 out of 10
- Audit events are opt-in to a Kafka topic, reads are not recorded, and there is no view for the trail.
- Confluent Platform components 7 out of 10
- Schema Registry and Kafka Connect are core features, and AKHQ has had basic ksqlDB support since release 0.24.0, configured per cluster with a URL and basic authentication, with no Kafka Streams view.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 6 out of 10
- It supports LDAP, OIDC and header authentication from a proxy, does not list SAML, and ships with security disabled until you enable it.
- On-prem and cloud together 7 out of 10
- Each cluster is a named connection, with Confluent Cloud and MSK IAM examples in its documentation.
On Confluent Platform. AKHQ is free under Apache 2.0, configured in YAML that fits a GitOps review, and browses topics, manages Schema Registry subjects and Kafka Connect connectors, with roles that combine resource types and cluster patterns. The AKHQ review covers it in detail.
Where it falls short. Audit is opt-in, reads are not in it, and there is no view for the trail. There is no approval step or expiring grant, and if the JWT signing secret is not set the API does not enforce group roles. It has no Kafka Streams view.
Rank 4 Lenses
lenses.io
56 out of 100 Total
- Cost a year
- $2,880 operator time, plus a licence quoted above 15 users (modelled)
- Confluent components
- Schema Registry and Kafka Connect; its own SQL, ksqlDB not listed
- Deployment
- HQ on PostgreSQL, an agent and database per cluster
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 7 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 6 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 7 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 7 out of 10
Why these scores for Lenses
- Out of the data path 4 out of 10
- It runs a central HQ on PostgreSQL plus an agent and an agent database beside every cluster, and HQ has no high-availability option.
- Production access on request 4 out of 10
- Its masking is the strictest view-time model, global with no escape even for admins, but no approval step or time-boxed grant is described.
- Audit trail per person 7 out of 10
- Audit logs can be read in the product, with no need to build a consumer first.
- Confluent Platform components 6 out of 10
- The Lenses review lists Schema Registry and Connect beside its own SQL Studio and SQL Processors, and does not list ksqlDB or a Kafka Streams view.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 7 out of 10
- SSO spans Okta, Keycloak, OneLogin, Google and Entra ID, with basic authentication only on Community.
- On-prem and cloud together 7 out of 10
- It connects to any provider exposing a Kafka-compatible API, one agent per cluster.
On Confluent Platform. Lenses brings vendor-backed RBAC, SSO, in-product audit logs and SQL Studio for querying topics, which is the reason to choose it if analysts need SQL over Kafka. The Lenses review covers its Schema Registry and Connect support, topology and lineage views, and data catalog.
Where it falls short. Every cluster adds an agent and a database to deploy and patch, and HQ is a single node that every cluster depends on. The review does not list ksqlDB, so a team that writes ksqlDB queries keeps a second place to run them. The published Team Edition is $4,000 a year for up to 15 users on one cluster, so 50 engineers across 3 clusters is an Enterprise quote.
Rank 5 Confluent Control Center
confluent.io
47 out of 100 Total
- Cost a year
- $2,880 operator time, plus a Confluent Platform subscription that is quoted (modelled)
- Sign-in
- OIDC on self-managed; no SAML
- Scope
- Confluent Platform clusters only
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 2 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 4 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 10 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 5 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 2 out of 10
Why these scores for Confluent Control Center
- Out of the data path 4 out of 10
- It is not a proxy, but it needs a dedicated host of 4 cores, 8 GB and 200 GB and a metrics reporter configured on each broker.
- Production access on request 2 out of 10
- Access runs through Confluent RBAC role bindings, which have no DENY rules, and no approval step, time-boxed grant or masking is described.
- Audit trail per person 4 out of 10
- Confluent Server’s structured audit logs, which need the Confluent Enterprise License, record authorization decisions for the connection’s principal, which is not always the person behind a tool.
- Confluent Platform components 10 out of 10
- It is Confluent’s own console for brokers, Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, with ksqlDB development built in and Confluent RBAC extending the same bindings to each, the deepest native view of those components on this page.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 5 out of 10
- OIDC is the only single sign-on protocol on self-managed deployments, with users and groups from LDAP or OIDC through Confluent RBAC.
- On-prem and cloud together 2 out of 10
- It documents Confluent Platform clusters only, and cannot monitor MSK, Redpanda or Aiven.
On Confluent Platform. Control Center is the console Confluent ships with Confluent Platform, and the Control Center review records native Kafka Streams topology and ksqlDB development views of the whole Confluent stack that no open-source Kafka UI matches. The next-generation Control Center, released with Confluent Platform 8.0 in May 2025, moved to a Prometheus-based architecture and cut startup from 15 to 50 minutes to about one minute. NORD/LB and TD both started on it.
Where it falls short. It reaches Confluent Platform clusters only, so a team that adds Confluent Cloud or moves to open-source Kafka needs a second tool. It offers no approval step or expiring grant, SAML is not available on self-managed deployments, and moving from the legacy version to the next generation is a full migration that discards historical metrics. It is not sold separately and its price is not published.
Cost a year. $2,880 of engineering time on this page’s estimate, 2 hours a month at $120 an hour, on top of a Confluent Platform subscription that Confluent quotes rather than publishes, so the total cannot be compared with the others here.
Compare Kpow vs Confluent Control CenterConfluent Control Center review
Rank 6 Conduktor
conduktor.io
63 out of 100 Total
- Cost a year
- 50 seats at $1,200 plus $2,880 operator time, so $62,880; Gateway core adds $60,000 (modelled)
- Confluent components
- Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB
- Deployment
- Console on PostgreSQL 13+; data-level controls through Gateway, a proxy
- Out of the data path ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 3 out of 10
- Production access on request ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 6 out of 10
- Audit trail per person ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 8 out of 10
- Confluent Platform components ×2 weight, this criterion counts 2 times toward the total
- 7 out of 10
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- 7 out of 10
- On-prem and cloud together
- 8 out of 10
Why these scores for Conduktor
- Out of the data path 3 out of 10
- Console needs PostgreSQL 13 or later, and its encryption, data-level masking and Virtual Clusters only work when client traffic goes through Gateway, a proxy in the data path that adds 2 to 10 ms per message.
- Production access on request 6 out of 10
- Masking can exempt users or groups, which beats every other tool here on who sees unmasked data, and cross-team access requests are approved by the owning team, but no expiring grant is described and topic creation that passes policy is a direct API call.
- Audit trail per person 8 out of 10
- Console logs produce, consume and admin requests across more than 70 event types with user, IP and timestamp, browsable in the UI and exported as CloudEvents.
- Confluent Platform components 7 out of 10
- The Conduktor review records Confluent-compatible Schema Registries, ksqlDB and Kafka Connect management in the Console UI, and no Kafka Streams topology view is described.
- Directory and Kafka sign-in 7 out of 10
- Its SSO configuration covers LDAP and OIDC, with guides for Okta, Entra ID and Keycloak, and does not describe SAML.
- On-prem and cloud together 8 out of 10
- Its cluster configuration covers Confluent Cloud, Aiven, Amazon MSK and Cloudera, and Console works across clusters.
On Confluent Platform. Conduktor pairs Console, a web UI, with Gateway, a Kafka protocol proxy. The Conduktor review records Console support for Confluent Platform and Cloud, Confluent-compatible Schema Registries, ksqlDB and Kafka Connect. Conduktor’s Gateway documentation describes Gateway as a Kafka proxy between client applications and brokers, which is where its encryption, masking of the data itself and Virtual Clusters for multi-tenancy are enforced.
Where it falls short. Console connects to Confluent Platform directly and needs its own PostgreSQL. Conduktor’s data-level controls, such as encryption, masking of the data itself and virtual clusters for multi-tenancy, run in Gateway, a Kafka proxy that client applications connect through, which puts Gateway in the data path for those clients. Per-seat pricing grows with every engineer who needs access.
Cost a year. $62,880 on this page’s model of 50 engineers. Conduktor’s published Team Edition price is $1,200 a seat a year, $60,000, and the model adds 2 engineer-hours a month at $120 an hour, $2,880. On AWS Marketplace, Conduktor Enterprise lists Gateway core at $60,000 a year, so the data-level controls take the total to $122,880.
Compare Conduktor vs Confluent Control CenterConduktor review
What teams on Confluent Platform need
This page is about self-managed Confluent Platform: Confluent Server brokers with Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams applications, run in your own data centre or on Kubernetes with Confluent’s operator. Confluent Cloud is a managed service with its own API keys, Metrics API and managed connectors, and its tooling questions are different. For the same comparison on another distribution, see the best Kafka UI tools for Amazon MSK, and for the broader field on any distribution, the best Kafka management tools.
Confluent Platform already ships a console, Control Center, inside its subscription. The question a platform team asks is what a second tool adds and what it costs to run beside the one it has. TD’s platform team found Control Center could only accept admin access, so the bank’s many client teams could not serve themselves. NORD/LB, which runs Confluent’s Kubernetes operator, used Control Center first and then added Kpow as a companion for search across large schemas, schema-validated test data and tighter production access, while keeping Confluent as its platform.
Three things come up once several teams share a Confluent Platform cluster. The tool has to connect the way Confluent Server already authenticates clients, often Kerberos or mutual TLS, and read records serialised against Schema Registry, including schemas with references. It has to cover the rest of the platform, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, because those are where many production problems turn up. And it has to answer the governance questions Confluent RBAC leaves open. Role bindings grant actions to the principal that connects, they have no DENY rules, and they offer no approval step, no grant that expires and no masking, so when twenty engineers share one tool, the broker sees the tool and only the tool’s own log can name the person.
Cost and portability are the other reasons teams look beyond Control Center. It is not sold separately, and the Control Center review records practitioners rating Confluent’s pricing 5 to 6 out of 10. Gmarket, the South Korean marketplace, ran the licensed Confluent distribution, moved to community Kafka to cut licence cost, and replaced Control Center with Kpow for consumer lag, topic offsets and data inspect across 10 clusters and about 150 users. Control Center documents Confluent Platform clusters only, so a tool that also manages Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK and open-source Kafka keeps working whichever way the topology changes. Confluent’s licensing documentation also places Control Center, Confluent RBAC and structured audit logs under the Confluent Enterprise License, while Schema Registry, Kafka Connect and ksqlDB are available under the Confluent Community License, so a team running only the community-licensed components has no Control Center and no Confluent RBAC to build on. The total cost of moving off a licensed Confluent distribution is worked through in the migrating to open source Kafka talk.
One requirement cuts across all of these: where the tool runs. A tool that runs as a container in your own environment and connects to the brokers the way any Kafka client does adds nothing to the path your producers and consumers take, and nothing to the brokers themselves. Kpow is one container with no external database, installed in your own environment and out of the data path. Control Center is not a proxy, but it needs a dedicated host and a metrics reporter configured on each broker. Conduktor Console also connects directly, with a PostgreSQL database of its own; Conduktor’s data-level controls, such as encryption, masking of the data itself and virtual clusters, run in Conduktor Gateway, a Kafka proxy that client applications connect through.
Who runs Kpow on Confluent Platform
Two Kpow customers have described in public how Kpow sits beside Confluent’s own tooling. NORD/LB runs Confluent Platform on Confluent’s Kubernetes operator and develops its ksqlDB queries in Kpow. TD, which runs on-prem clusters beside Confluent Cloud, put its client teams on Kpow because Control Center could only accept admin access. Each card is tagged with the rubric criteria its evidence speaks to, and the other tags name what else the source covers.
Which customer shows which criterion
- Production access on request
- NORD/LB and TD Bank
- Audit trail per person
- TD Bank
- Confluent Platform components
- NORD/LB
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- TD Bank
- On-prem and cloud together
- NORD/LB
-
NORD/LB
- Confluent Platform components
- Production access on request
- On-prem and cloud together
- Confluent for Kubernetes
- Replaced Control Center
- Debugging time
The German regional bank runs its Kafka on Confluent’s Kubernetes operator, with more than 200 topics, and started out on Confluent Control Center before adding Kpow as a companion tool while keeping Confluent as its streaming platform. NORD/LB develops ksqlDB queries and hit a 3,000-line query limit in its earlier interface; in Erik Schumann’s words, “Kpow doesn’t have this limitation, so we just switched the complete development of KSQL DB queries to Kpow.” Its case study describes two-step authorization, where people sign in to Kpow and then act through technical users with scoped permissions, so that in production, as he puts it, “we really want to narrow what people can see, and with Kpow’s two-step authorization, we could finally enforce that.” The bank says Kpow halved the time its teams spend debugging.
Source: NORD/LB case study
-
TD Bank
- Production access on request
- Audit trail per person
- Directory and Kafka sign-in
- Self-service for client teams
- On-prem and Confluent Cloud
- Custom SerDes
TD’s Event Streaming Platform runs on-prem clusters beside Confluent Cloud. In its early days the platform team created its client teams’ Kafka resources by hand in Confluent Control Center or on the command line, because, in staff engineer Sandy Yang’s words, Control Center “could only accept admin access and wasn’t scalable”. With Kpow the client teams and the platform team all work in one tool, and the platform team still opens Control Center for some admin testing. Access is by Active Directory group, each onboarded team gets its own Kpow tenant and access policy, and production inspect access is granted for an hour or two through the Kpow API from a ServiceNow form, which in her words “gives TD an audit trail.”
How a team runs Confluent Platform with Kpow
The workflows below are how a platform team puts Kpow to work on Confluent Platform. Each one is built from documented Kpow features.
Install it beside the cluster. Kpow runs as one Docker container or Java JAR, or on Kubernetes with the Helm charts, in the same environment as the brokers. It needs no external database, because its snapshots, metrics and audit log live in topics on your own cluster. To try it first, the Confluent Platform quickstart starts a Confluent broker, Schema Registry, Kafka Connect and ksqlDB with Kpow in one Docker Compose file.
Connect to Confluent Server. Kpow takes the same cluster connection settings as a Kafka producer or consumer, with SASL GSSAPI (Kerberos) as the default mechanism, SCRAM, OAuth or mutual TLS, so it uses a principal the platform team creates and scopes with Confluent RBAC or ACLs like any other client.
Add Schema Registry, Connect and ksqlDB. Each Kafka cluster can carry several Schema Registries, Kafka Connect clusters and ksqlDB servers. Engineers create and edit schemas with references, manage connectors and set failed ones to restart on their own, and run ksqlDB queries under RBAC actions such as KSQLDB_QUERY, KSQLDB_EXECUTE and KSQLDB_TERMINATE_QUERY.
See Kafka Streams applications. Adding the Kpow Streams Agent to a Streams application lets Kpow show its topology and its thread, state store and RocksDB metrics, and export them to Prometheus for alerting.
Read and search the data. Data inspect decodes Avro, Protobuf and JSON Schema records against Schema Registry and filters them with kJQ, the partial-key search and filtering NORD/LB uses on 10-digit business partner IDs and financial statement schemas of more than 10,000 lines of JSON. Teams that encrypt payloads load their own SerDes, as TD does.
Sign people in and scope each team. Engineers sign in through LDAP, SAML or OpenID Connect, with directory groups mapped to roles. Tenants limit which topics, groups, connectors and ksqlDB servers each team can see, and RBAC sets Allow, Deny or Stage per action and resource, with Deny winning where policies overlap, which is the rule Confluent RBAC role bindings cannot express.
Grant production access for one task. A change system can call the Kpow API to create a temporary policy that grants inspect access on a named topic for an hour or two and then expires, and staged mutations hold a topic deletion or offset reset until a second person approves it. Data policies mask sensitive fields in data inspect and ksqlDB results on the server.
Keep the record. The audit log records each action, data inspect queries and ksqlDB statements included, with the person from the directory and the policy that allowed it, and a webhook sends those records to Slack, Microsoft Teams or the SIEM.
Watch lag across every cluster. Kpow shows each consumer group down to partition level and resets offsets from the same view, and publishes lag, broker, topic and connector metrics on Prometheus endpoints. One instance manages up to 12 clusters, so Confluent Platform clusters sit beside Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK or open-source Kafka in the same view.
Govern Flink jobs with the same sign-in. Teams that run Apache Flink beside Confluent Platform can put the same directory sign-in and Allow, Deny or Stage policies over their Flink jobs with Flex.
The live Kpow demo needs no signup. It runs on two Amazon MSK clusters rather than Confluent Platform, and shows topics, consumer groups, a Kafka Connect cluster, schema registries, data inspect and the __oprtr_audit_log topic. To run the workflows against your own Confluent Platform cluster, install Kpow; tenants, RBAC, temporary policies, staged mutations, masking, ksqlDB, Kafka Streams and the audit log are Kpow Enterprise features.
How Factor House approaches it
Kpow is built to sit next to Confluent Platform rather than replace any part of it. It is one Docker container or JAR, and everything it needs to operate is held in topics on your own cluster, so beyond Kafka it has no dependencies and nothing is installed on the brokers. It connects with the same cluster security settings as any other client, so applications keep talking to Confluent Server directly. The same deployment manages Confluent Cloud (set up Kpow with Confluent Cloud), Amazon MSK and open-source Kafka, which is what let Gmarket keep its tooling when it moved off the licensed Confluent distribution.
Control Center and Kpow do different jobs on Confluent Platform. Control Center is Confluent’s own console, comes inside the subscription and gives the deepest native view of Confluent’s components. Kpow adds what a shared platform needs for people (tenants, approvals, expiring production access, masking and an audit trail that names the person) and reaches clusters Control Center cannot, priced per cluster with 100 users included.
Where Kpow does not win: it governs people working through Kpow, so Confluent RBAC or ACLs stay the control for applications, and Confluent RBAC role bindings are still managed in Confluent’s tools. Kafka Streams topologies appear only for applications that include the Kpow Streams Agent, ksqlDB and Streams are Enterprise features, and Control Center’s native view of Confluent’s components remains deeper.
Kpow live demo
Open the screens a Confluent Platform team would use
The live Kpow demo needs no signup. It runs on two Amazon MSK clusters with a Kafka Connect cluster and several schema registries, so the topic, consumer group, connector, schema and data inspect screens are the same ones a team on Confluent Platform works in.
For platform teams running self-managed Confluent Platform.
Try the Kpow demoFAQ
What is the best Kafka management tool or Kafka UI for Confluent Platform?
On this page’s rubric, Kpow, with 89 of 100 points: it connects to Confluent Server over Kerberos, SCRAM, OAuth or mTLS, covers Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, adds expiring production access, approvals, masking and a per-person audit trail on top of Confluent RBAC, manages other distributions from the same deployment, and runs as one container with no external database and nothing in the data path. Kafbat UI is the highest-scoring free option.
Is there an alternative to Confluent Control Center?
Yes. Kpow, Kafbat UI, AKHQ, Lenses and Conduktor all connect to Confluent Platform clusters. TD put its client teams on Kpow because Control Center could only accept admin access, and Gmarket replaced Control Center with Kpow when it moved from the licensed Confluent distribution to community Kafka. Control Center keeps the deepest native view of Confluent’s own components. The two are compared feature by feature in Kpow vs Confluent Control Center.
What changes with the next-generation Control Center?
The next-generation Control Center shipped with Confluent Platform 8.0 in May 2025. It moved to a Prometheus-based architecture and starts in about a minute rather than 15 to 50, but moving from the legacy version is a full migration that discards historical metrics, and it still documents Confluent Platform clusters only. A team planning that migration can run Kpow beside the cluster first, since Kpow keeps its own snapshots, metrics and audit log in topics on the cluster and does not depend on Control Center. The Control Center review covers both generations.
Can a Kafka UI manage ksqlDB on Confluent Platform?
Kpow Enterprise manages ksqlDB servers, runs queries, and governs them with RBAC actions, tenants and the audit log; NORD/LB moved all of its ksqlDB query development to Kpow. Kafbat UI, AKHQ and Conduktor include basic ksqlDB support, and the Lenses review lists its own SQL rather than ksqlDB.
Does Kpow work with Kerberos-secured Confluent Platform clusters?
Yes. Kpow takes the standard Kafka client security settings, and its cluster configuration uses SASL with GSSAPI as the default mechanism, with the Kerberos service name and login settings available as environment variables. SCRAM, OAuth and mutual TLS are configured the same way.
Does a Kafka management tool replace Confluent RBAC?
No. Confluent RBAC or ACLs still control what applications and the tool’s own principal can do on Confluent Server. A tool such as Kpow adds per-person roles with Deny rules, approvals, expiring production access, masking and an audit trail for the engineers who work through it.
Will the same Kafka tool keep working after a move from Confluent Platform to Confluent Cloud or Apache Kafka?
Yes, if the tool is vendor-agnostic. Kpow manages self-managed Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Confluent Cloud and Amazon MSK from one deployment, up to 12 clusters per instance. Control Center documents Confluent Platform clusters only.
Does Kpow run alongside Confluent for Kubernetes?
Yes. Kpow is not a Confluent for Kubernetes resource; it installs beside it with its own Helm charts and connects to the brokers as an ordinary Kafka client, with the same security settings any producer or consumer uses. NORD/LB runs its Kafka on Confluent’s Kubernetes operator and uses Kpow beside it, as its case study describes.
Can a Kafka UI decode records that use Confluent schema references and data rules?
Kpow handles Confluent schema references since release 93.3 and applies Confluent Schema Registry data rules written in CEL, CEL_FIELD or JSONata when querying records in data inspect since release 95.1. Schemas with references can be created and edited in Kpow’s schema management.
Is there a free Kafka UI for Confluent Platform?
Control Center, Confluent RBAC and structured audit logs sit under the Confluent Enterprise License, so a team running only Confluent’s community-licensed components (Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB) has no Control Center. Kpow Community Edition is free on up to 3 clusters and 10 users and covers Schema Registry and Kafka Connect; ksqlDB, Kafka Streams, RBAC, masking and the audit log need Kpow Enterprise. Kafbat UI and AKHQ are open source. More free options are compared in the best free Kafka UI tools.
How these tools were scored
Six criteria score every option from 0 to 10: five that Factor House pages apply to any shared Kafka platform, and one for the Confluent Platform components the tool has to cover. They are listed here in order of weight. A criterion that appears on other Factor House pages scores each option the same way here, and only its weight changes with the reader.
1. Out of the data path (counts twice). The tool should run in your own environment, connect to the brokers as an ordinary Kafka client and keep no data outside your own cluster. Scored lower: tools that need an external database of their own or a component on the brokers, and tools whose controls work only when application traffic passes through a vendor’s proxy. A self-hosted container with no external database and no proxy scores 9, a tool with a database of its own 6, one with several databases or a component on the brokers 4, and one that needs both a database and a proxy for its controls 3; 10 is kept for an option with nothing to deploy at all.
2. Production access on request (counts twice). Can an engineer be given read access to a production topic for a task, approved and time-boxed, without a standing role binding? Can production writes be held for a second person’s approval? And is sensitive data masked for the people who do get in? The wider set of controls over deletes and offset resets is compared in Kafka destructive operations tools.
3. Audit trail per person (counts twice). When people work through a shared tool, Confluent Server’s audit log records the tool’s principal, so only the tool’s own log can name the person. The log should include data reads as well as changes, and be readable without building a consumer first. Kafka audit logging tools compares the layers in detail.
4. Confluent Platform components (counts twice). Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams applications are part of most Confluent Platform deployments. A tool scores 10 only with a native view of all of them, 9 when it covers all four with documented limits, 7 when it covers Schema Registry, Connect and basic ksqlDB, and lower where ksqlDB is absent or reported broken. Registry choices are compared more broadly in Kafka schema registry tools, and connector tooling in Kafka Connect monitoring tools.
5. Directory and Kafka sign-in (counts once). People should sign in through the company directory, LDAP directly or SAML and OIDC in front of Active Directory, with directory groups mapped to roles. On the cluster side the tool has to connect the way Confluent Server already authenticates clients, which often means SASL GSSAPI (Kerberos). Kafka SSO tools covers the protocol detail.
6. On-prem and cloud together (counts once). One deployment of the tool should reach Confluent Platform clusters and whatever runs beside them or replaces them, Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK or open-source Kafka; the general comparison is best tools to manage multiple Kafka clusters from one place.
Costs are modelled for 3 Confluent Platform clusters (development, test and production) and 50 engineers at $120 per engineer hour, using the same hours per tool class as Factor House’s other comparison pages. Tools with a licence carry the published price plus 2 hours a month to run. The open-source UIs carry 6 hours a month, $8,640 a year, to run, secure and keep current. Control Center’s licence sits inside a Confluent Platform subscription that is quoted, not published, so only its running cost is shown. Kpow’s $16,380 uses the Enterprise price of $4,500 per cluster with 100 users included; Community Edition is free for 3 clusters and 10 users, so a 50-engineer team is on Enterprise. For free options compared at any team size, see the best free Kafka UI tools.
The criteria map onto the Confluent Platform components in the figure below.
Every option is scored from 0 to 10 on each criterion, from the evidence and sources this page cites, and the reason for each score is on its card. The criteria are weighted: Out of the data path counts twice, Production access on request counts twice, Audit trail per person counts twice, Confluent Platform components counts twice, Directory and Kafka sign-in counts once and On-prem and cloud together counts once, for a total out of 100. Out of the data path counts twice because Confluent Platform already ships a console that needs a dedicated host and a metrics reporter on every broker, so a second tool that adds another database, or a proxy that client applications must connect through for its controls to apply, is more to run on infrastructure the team already operates itself. Production access on request and the audit trail per person count twice because Confluent RBAC grants role bindings to the principal that connects, with no approval step, expiring grant or masking, so the tool has to supply both. Confluent Platform components count twice because a team on Confluent Platform runs Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, ksqlDB and Kafka Streams, and a tool that leaves any of them out sends engineers back to a second console. Directory and Kafka sign-in, and on-prem and cloud together, count once. This page is published by Factor House, which makes Kpow. Every option is scored on the same rubric and the same sources: Kpow's per-criterion scores are set the same way as every other option's and are not adjusted, and the weights apply to every option alike. Kpow ranks first on its total of 89 out of 100. The other options follow by total. Conduktor is listed last whatever its total; on its total of 63 it would place third.