How Much Does Debezium Cost to Run at Scale?

Debezium’s code is licensed under Apache 2.0. Running it through Kafka Connect adds costs for brokers, the Connect runtime, storage, and data transfer. The estimates below use vendor-published rates and a defined workload.

How Much Does Debezium Cost at Scale?

Debezium has no license fee, but running it through Kafka Connect requires infrastructure for Kafka brokers, the Connect runtime, storage, and data transfer. The monthly cost depends on throughput, retention, broker count, Connect capacity, and network use. The worked example below uses Amazon MSK’s published rates to estimate broker, storage, one Connect MCU, and an illustrative cross-AZ data-transfer charge for a defined workload. It excludes engineering time and Snowflake warehouse costs.

What Are the Costs of Running Debezium?

The Debezium documentation describes Debezium as a set of distributed services that capture database changes so applications can see them. It records every row-level change in a table as a change event. Most deployments run it through Apache Kafka Connect. The bill is the four line items around that: brokers, the Connect runtime, storage, and network.

• Kafka brokers. Amazon MSK charges an hourly rate for broker instance usage, billed at one-second resolution. Broker hours scale with how many brokers run and how long they stay up. A broker that runs for part of an hour still bills for that part.

• The Connect runtime. Kafka Connect operates as a separate service beside the Kafka broker. Debezium's Kafka Connect installation page calls it the heaviest option when Kafka is not already part of your stack. That path means running and operating both Kafka and Kafka Connect. On Amazon MSK, the runtime bills by the MCU-hour at $0.11 an hour per MCU, as of October 2026.

• Change log and schema history storage. Connect stores offsets, connector configuration, and database schema history in Kafka topics, MSK lists storage at $0.10 per GB-month in the US East region, and Confluent lists stored data at $0.08 per GB-month, as of October 2026.

• Network. AWS charges standard data transfer rates for data moving in and out of MSK clusters, so cross-AZ traffic and egress are separate lines. Every destination you feed from the cluster pulls data across the network, and that traffic lands on the invoice on its own.

Three inputs move every one of those lines: throughput, retention, and how many connectors run.

A longer retention window raises broker storage and keeps more of the schema history topics alive. More connectors add Connect workers and push more traffic out of the cluster. Raising throughput moves the broker hours, the Connect hours, and the transfer line at once.

Debezium Infrastructure Pricing Breakdown

Rates below come from the vendors' own pricing pages, as of October 2026.

Read the MSK rows as the self-managed path and the Confluent rows as the managed-Kafka path. MSK meters brokers by the hour, the Connect runtime by the MCU-hour, and storage by the GB-month. Confluent meters the cluster monthly, stored data by the GB-month, and connector work by task-hour and by GB. The Confluent connector pricing page lists a managed PostgreSQL CDC source connector built on Debezium.

On MSK the brokers bill for the hours they run, so an idle connector still pays for the cluster. On Confluent Cloud, running connectors on your own dedicated Connect cluster adds $0.27778 an hour, as of October 2026.

Worked example: what the Kafka layer and a managed plan bill

Suppose a source database produces 100 KB/s of change data. Assume a three-broker kafka.m7g.large Amazon MSK cluster in US East (N. Virginia), 24 hours of retention, a replication factor of 2, and a 30-day month. Broker charges are $440.64 (3 × 720 hours × $0.204). The retained data is about 17.3 GB, costing about $1.73 (17.3 × $0.10 per GB-month). One MSK Connect MCU running for the month adds $79.20 (720 × $0.11).

The workload transfers about 259.2 GB in 30 days. As an illustrative cross-AZ estimate, if one 259.2 GB data stream crosses Availability Zones and costs $0.01/GB at each endpoint, transfer adds about $5.18. Same-AZ transfer is free, so the actual charge depends on where the database, brokers, and Connect workers run. Under these assumptions, broker, storage, Connect, and estimated transfer charges total about $526.75 a month.

For the same 259.2 GB monthly stream, Estuary captures about 259.2 GB and delivers about 259.2 GB to Snowflake. That is about 518.4 billed GB, or $259.20 at $0.50 per GB, plus $200 for two connector instances—for roughly $459.20 a month.

Both figures exclude engineering time and Snowflake warehouse charges. The MSK transfer estimate is illustrative; the actual charge depends on the network layout.

These estimates use the same 259.2 GB of monthly source changes over 30 days. The MSK estimate includes three brokers, 24-hour retention, a replication factor of 2, one Connect MCU, and an illustrative cross-AZ transfer charge. Estuary’s estimate includes capturing and delivering that same volume, plus two connector instances. Both exclude engineering time and Snowflake warehouse charges; actual MSK transfer costs depend on network placement.

Hidden costs: engineers, on-call, and upgrades

A self-managed CDC stack also requires engineering time for setup, monitoring, incident response, and upgrades. These costs vary by team and deployment, so estimate them using your expected engineering hours and loaded hourly rate.

Incidents add on-call and recovery time. A stalled replication slot can cause PostgreSQL to retain WAL until it fills the space allocated for pg_wal; include monitoring and recovery in your estimate.

The Kafka Connect path also needs ongoing maintenance and upgrades. Add the time your team expects to spend operating and updating Kafka and Kafka Connect to the infrastructure costs.

How to lower the bill with managed CDC from Estuary

Dropping Kafka for Debezium Server moves the bill rather than removing it. Debezium Server runs standalone, with no Kafka cluster required. It writes change events to messaging systems including Amazon Kinesis, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, and Apache Pulsar. You trade broker hours and topic storage for whatever that service charges.

Estuary's free tier covers 10 GB a month and 2 connector instances at no charge. Estuary’s Cloud pricing is transparent: the published rates are $0.50 per GB and $100 per connector instance per month for the first six instances, as of October 2026. Each instance after the sixth drops to $50. The plan delivers with millisecond latency or in batch at no extra charge.

Estuary's bill grows with your data volume, and a self-managed stack also carries engineering and on-call costs. Price both sides on the same volume: take your monthly captured and delivered GB, apply Estuary's per-GB rate, and add the connector instances. Then price the brokers, storage, Connect workers, and transfer you would run yourself, and add the engineer hours from the Hidden costs section. The smaller total wins on your numbers. Estuary's pricing page lists the Cloud plan rates.

FAQ

Debezium's code is licensed under Apache 2.0.

Is Debezium free to use?

The Debezium license page states that all Debezium code is licensed under Apache 2.0. The cost sits in the Kafka cluster and Connect runtime, in storage, and in data transfer. Budget for infrastructure and engineering time, not for a license.

Does Debezium require Kafka?

The Debezium architecture page says Debezium is most commonly deployed by means of Apache Kafka Connect. That path needs a Kafka cluster and a Connect cluster to run. Debezium Server is the alternative: it runs standalone with no Kafka required. Kafka is the default, not a requirement.

How much does Kafka Connect cost?

MSK Connect lists at $0.11 an hour per MCU, as of October 2026. Each MCU provides 1 vCPU of compute and 4 GB of memory. MSK bills those MCU-hours, so the Connect line follows the hours the runtime stays on. Confluent Cloud meters managed connector work on connector task-hours plus $0.025 per GB of data transfer.

How much does Debezium cost per month?

There is no fixed monthly price for Debezium. Estimate broker hours, Connect worker-hours, storage, data transfer, and engineering time for your workload. The worked example estimates broker, storage, one Connect MCU, and illustrative cross-AZ transfer charges; add engineering and Snowflake warehouse costs for a fuller estimate.