# Conduktor vs Kafbat UI: Kafka UI Comparison Kafbat UI is a good free Kafka UI. So is Conduktor Console's Community Edition. The difference shows once several teams share Kafka and someone has to own access, standards, audit, and cost. [Talk to Us](https://www.conduktor.io/contact/demo?src=compare-conduktor-vs-kafbat-ui) [Get Started Free →](https://www.conduktor.io/get-started?src=compare-conduktor-vs-kafbat-ui) ## A good UI, maintained by the people who built it Kafbat UI picked up where Provectus kafka-ui left off, under Apache 2.0, and keeps shipping. For a developer debugging a topic, browsing messages, or checking lag, it does the job and costs nothing. So does Console, with message replay, DLQ reprocessing, and offset-reset previews on top. What it isn't is a control plane. There's no ownership model, no self-service with guardrails, no approval workflow, no alerting, and no cost attribution, and RBAC lives in a YAML file the platform team edits by hand. That's the list a platform team starts writing once Kafka has fifty consumers instead of five. Conduktor's [Community Edition](https://www.conduktor.io/get-started?src=compare-conduktor-vs-kafbat-ui) is free too, for 50 users and 3 clusters, so this isn't free versus paid, and it isn't about who handles the day-to-day; both do. It's about what your team needs after that. Competitor details last checked against the Kafbat UI repository and documentation, September 2026. ## Where Conduktor and Kafbat UI diverge Four capabilities that decide the evaluation for most platform teams. - **Ownership and self-service** — Catalogs, guardrails, and approval workflows. Kafbat shows a flat list of permitted resources. - **RBAC and audit** — Resource-scoped permissions managed in the UI, API, or Terraform, with a full audit log. Kafbat: YAML roles, basic audit view. - **Monitoring and alerts** — Lag, throughput, broker, and connector alerts to Slack, Teams, email, and webhooks. Kafbat has no alerting. - **Cost attribution** — Spend attributed to topics, applications, and teams. Not in Kafbat's scope. ## Conduktor Console vs Kafbat UI: feature comparison Conduktor Community Edition is free for up to 50 users and 3 clusters. Where a capability needs a paid plan (Team Edition or Enterprise), the note says so. - **Conduktor Console** — Kafbat UI --- - **License & cost** — ⚠ Commercial; free Community Edition (50 users, 3 clusters), paid plans with unlimited clusters. [See pricing →](https://www.conduktor.io/pricing) — ✓ Apache 2.0, free - **Multi-cluster** — ✓ Any Kafka provider, unlimited clusters on paid plans — ✓ Any Kafka provider - **Deployment footprint** — ⚠ Console container plus a PostgreSQL database — ✓ Single stateless container, no database - **Topic & message operations** — ✓ Browse, filter, produce, replay, and reprocess, including from a DLQ; reset offsets with a preview; automatic Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema decoding — ✓ Browse, filter, and produce with Avro, JSON Schema, and Protobuf; no replay or DLQ reprocessing - **Schema Registry** — ✓ Confluent Schema Registry and AWS Glue, with subject ownership through applications — ✓ Confluent Schema Registry - **Kafka Connect** — ✓ Manage connectors, restart individual tasks, connector error traces, auto-restart of failed connectors (paid plans) — ✓ View and manage connectors and tasks - **Authentication** — ✓ OIDC and LDAP in every tier — ✓ OAuth 2.0 (GitHub, GitLab, Google), LDAP, basic auth - **RBAC** — ✓ Permissions scoped to topics, consumer groups, subjects, and connectors, managed in the UI, API, or Terraform; group-level RBAC on paid plans — ⚠ Roles defined in YAML with regex-scoped topics, groups, schemas, and connectors; no UI management - **Data masking** — ⚠ Field-level masking in Console masks the Console screen (unlimited on paid plans); masking every client needs [Conduktor Gateway](https://www.conduktor.io/gateway) — ⚠ Masks fields on the Kafbat screen only; clients reading Kafka directly see the raw payload - **Audit log** — ✓ Who did what, when, across every resource; unlimited retention on paid plans — ⚠ Basic audit view - **Monitoring & alerts** — ✓ Cluster, topic, and consumer lag metrics; alerts to Slack, Teams, email, and webhooks; Prometheus integration — ✗ Metrics displayed in the UI only; no alerting - **Infrastructure insights** — ✓ Health score per cluster, partition skew, stale topics, under-replication risk, data quality rules — ✗ Not available - **Ownership & self-service** — ✓ Application and topic catalogs, guardrails, approval workflows (paid plans) — ✗ Not available - **Terraform** — ✓ [Official provider](https://registry.terraform.io/providers/conduktor/conduktor/latest) for Console resources — ✗ Configuration by YAML only - **Chargeback** — ✓ Cost attribution by topic, application, and cluster (paid plans) — ✗ Not available - **Wire-level security** — ⚠ Encryption, masking, and virtual clusters through [Conduktor Gateway](https://www.conduktor.io/gateway), a separate proxy to deploy — ✗ Not applicable - **AI assistance** — ✓ [MCP server](https://www.conduktor.io/mcp) inside Console, read-only and scoped to each user's RBAC — ✓ MCP server - **Support** — ✓ Vendor support in every paid tier; SLA in Enterprise — ⚠ Community support through GitHub and community channels Federated ownership From a flat list of topics to a catalog with owners Console maps every topic, schema, connector, and consumer group to an application and the team that owns it. Developers find what they need in the catalog and request access from the owner; the platform team defines the guardrails once. Kafbat, like most UIs, shows a permitted user a flat list of resources with no ownership behind it. [How federated ownership works →](https://www.conduktor.io/federated-ownership) - **Conduktor Console topic catalog with owner teams and access requests** Monitoring and alerts Know before the consumer falls behind Alerts on consumer lag, topic throughput, broker storage, and failed connector tasks go to Slack, Teams, email, or a webhook, with per-cluster health scoring and risk analysis on top. Kafbat shows metrics while you're looking at it; alerting has to come from somewhere else. [Kafka monitoring in Console →](https://www.conduktor.io/product/kafka-monitoring) - **Conduktor Console alert configuration with Slack and webhook destinations** ## Which should you choose? - **Kafbat UI fits if...** — It already covers what your team needs, you're comfortable maintaining RBAC in YAML, alerting lives elsewhere, and you'd rather run an Apache 2.0 project than work with a vendor. That's a reasonable place to be. - **Conduktor fits if...** — You want the same day-to-day operations, free for 50 users and 3 clusters in Community Edition, with a path to ownership, self-service with guardrails, approval workflows, audit trails, alerting, cost attribution, and Terraform-managed configuration when several teams share Kafka, plus a vendor on the hook when something breaks. ## Read more customer stories - [Swiss Post: 5x Kafka Growth](https://www.conduktor.io/customer-stories/how-swiss-post-governs-democratizes-kafka-usage) - [Retail: One-Hour Kafka Onboarding](https://www.conduktor.io/customer-stories/one-hour-kafka-onboarding-retail-streaming-operations) - [CDC Informatique: Governed Self-Service](https://www.conduktor.io/customer-stories/cdc-informatique-governed-kafka-self-service) ## Frequently asked questions **Is Kafbat UI the same as Provectus kafka-ui?** Kafbat UI is the community-maintained continuation of the Provectus kafka-ui project, run by its original core contributors after Provectus stopped maintaining the original. It is the actively developed fork, published under Apache 2.0. **Is Conduktor free like Kafbat?** Conduktor Community Edition is free and self-hosted for up to 50 users and 3 clusters, and includes SSO/LDAP, API, CLI, the Terraform provider, and MCP. Paid plans add federated ownership, chargeback, unlimited audit logs, group-level RBAC, and unlimited clusters; see [pricing](https://www.conduktor.io/pricing). **Can I migrate from Kafbat UI to Conduktor?** Yes, and there's no data to migrate. Console connects to the same clusters and Schema Registry. Your Kafbat RBAC YAML becomes Console permissions, typically expressed through the Terraform provider so they stay in Git. **Does Kafbat UI have RBAC?** Yes. Roles are defined in YAML with permissions on clusters, topics (fixed or regex), consumer groups, schemas, and connectors, and mapped to OAuth or LDAP groups. What it lacks is a UI to manage them, an ownership model, and approval workflows for access requests. **Which one is better for a large enterprise?** For browsing, topic operations, and lag, both do the job, and Console's Community Edition is free too. Once dozens of teams share Kafka and compliance requires audit evidence, resource ownership, and alerting, Console is built for that and Kafbat is not. Our [Kafka UI roundup](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/kafka-ui-tools) covers AKHQ and Redpanda Console as well. # Try Console free, on your own clusters Community Edition: 50 users, 3 clusters, SSO, API, CLI, Terraform, and MCP. Self-hosted, no card. [Install Community Edition](https://www.conduktor.io/get-started?src=compare-conduktor-vs-kafbat-ui) [Book a Demo →](https://www.conduktor.io/contact/demo?src=compare-conduktor-vs-kafbat-ui) ### More comparisons [Conduktor vs AKHQ →](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/conduktor-vs-akhq) · [Conduktor vs Redpanda Console →](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/conduktor-vs-redpanda-console) · [Conduktor vs Lenses →](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/conduktor-vs-lenses) · [Conduktor vs Confluent Control Center →](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/conduktor-vs-confluent-control-center) · [All Kafka UI tools →](https://www.conduktor.io/compare/kafka-ui-tools)