Summary

  • Confluent Cloud bills Cluster Linking for link hours, incoming data and outgoing data. Link objects remain chargeable without mirror topics or throughput, and identical duplicate links are billed separately.
  • In the source-initiated private-to-public mode, deleting either endpoint object stops replication. Both objects must be deleted to end the link billing. The data-flow milestone and the paid-resource milestone are separate deliverables.

For a migration team, the arrival of the last message is a finish line. Confluent's link meter can keep going.

Its Cluster Linking documentation says link objects are charged even when there is no mirror topic and no data throughput. An empty bridge remains rented. In this service, usage includes the number of connection objects and the time they exist, alongside the bytes that cross them.

That distinction gives an ordinary project handover a financial edge. One team certifies that the old flow has stopped; another certifies that the new environment works. Someone still needs to own the end of the paid connection. Otherwise, the calendar becomes the project's most diligent contractor.

Cluster Linking is a managed replication service between clusters. Its read-only mirror topics preserve message bytes, partitions and offsets. Selected configurations, consumer positions and access rules can also be synchronised. Those capabilities support migration, sharing across environments and recovery copies. Keeping a path ready can be precisely what the customer wants to buy.

The question is how long that choice remains worth buying.

The hourly price has two ends

The public rules reviewed on October 29 distinguish three dimensions: link hours, ingress and egress. When both ends are Confluent Cloud clusters, each incurs its own applicable hourly rate for the link.

For links within one cloud provider, or where either end uses public networking, the base rate is $0.25 an hour at an internet endpoint and $0.50 at a privately networked endpoint. When the clusters are with different cloud providers and both use Confluent Cloud private networking, the base rate becomes $2.50 per cluster per hour. A premium-region endpoint is priced at $5. Regional multipliers apply to base prices.

At base rates alone, one supported unidirectional link between two public Confluent Cloud endpoints adds up to $0.50 an hour, or $12 for 24 hours. Two private endpoints with the same provider total $24 a day; two nonpremium private endpoints across providers total $120. Those are link hours before regional adjustments or discounts, excluding cluster capacity, storage and transfers. A customer's actual total requires its deployed regions, object inventory and contracted rates.

One deletion stops the flow. Two close this link's bill

A particular mode makes the difference tangible. A privately networked Dedicated source cluster initiates a connection to a Dedicated destination with secured public endpoints. A link object is created at the destination, with a paired object at the private source.

Deleting either stops replication. Ending that link's billing requires deleting both. Leave one behind and hourly charges can continue. This paired-object rule belongs to the source-initiated private-to-public mode; the two objects do not mean data is being replicated in two directions.

A source team and a destination team can therefore complete their technical tasks while leaving a paid half without a retirement owner. Successful cutover and financial closure have different evidence. Treating them as one checkbox gives the surviving object a very comfortable tenancy.

Duplicates have another clear rule. Confluent permits multiple links with identical source, destination and security configuration, does not deduplicate them, and charges each object. A deliberate reserve and an extra object left by a repeated setup attempt need different decisions from the customer. The meter supplies no judgement about their usefulness.

Bytes have their own boundaries

Cluster Linking's published base egress price is $0.25 per GB. The documentation uses a binary gigabyte, 2 to the power of 30 bytes, equivalent to a GiB. Ingress follows the receiving cluster's Kafka ingress price. The $0.01 used in one worked example is an example rate, not a universal destination price.

Metadata also travels. Configurations, consumer positions and access rules are billed at the same transfer rate as messages, so application-message volume can be smaller than total billable link traffic. For this transfer between two Confluent Cloud clusters, Confluent pays the underlying cloud-provider egress. The corresponding ordinary Kafka ingress and egress charges are not added again on top of the Cluster Linking items.

There is a separate private–public–private pattern involving an intermediate jump cluster. That adds its cluster hours, two links and transfer on each hop. Two hops are a different architecture from the paired objects of one source-initiated connection. A useful cost model follows the actual topology, rather than counting every line on the diagram as the same thing.

A quiet recovery link can be a valuable option. A temporary migration link kept after the move needs a renewed reason to exist. Confluent's public rules put a price on that continuing choice. Giving the last paid object an owner is as necessary as giving the last message a destination.

Sources