Cloudflare K2
Ranked 7 of 19 message brokers by recommenders
People recommend K2 as a cheap, serverless, Kafka-compatible event stream for long retention; critics are reluctant to build on a non-standard platform and call the per-GB price steep.
People recommend K2 as a cheap, serverless, Kafka-compatible event stream for long retention; critics are reluctant to build on a non-standard platform and call the per-GB price steep.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low cost for long retention
“Having a cost efficient fully serverless Kafka compatible service would be great”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” “The primary benefit of K2 is cost, particularly for longer retention periods.”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” “Making the individual stream really cheap and easy is a big simplification”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” Serverless Kafka-compatible option
“Having a cost efficient fully serverless Kafka compatible service would be great”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” “Redpanda users coming across this would definitely find this helpful.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” Object storage-based design appeals
“merging them together through object storage is a highly appealing package”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” “we have a big leg up on folks building on top of S3”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Reluctant to build on non-standard
“I'm always reluctant to build on anything that isn't a portable industry standard.”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” Per-GB price called steep
“Data Consumed being at the same $0.04/GB is rather steep”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams” Questionable use on its own
“IMO using K2 on its own doesn't make sense”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare K2: serverless event streams”
Other message brokers people recommend
The four most recommended other message brokers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka | 53 | 55 | 49% | 12 | — | — |
| NATS | 34 | 16 | 68% | 9 | 7.5 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Amazon SQS | 18 | 14 | 56% | 8 | — | — |
| Redpanda | 17 | 4 | 81% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Cloudflare K2This page | 10 | 2 | 83% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Redpanda users coming across this would definitely find this helpful.”
“Data Consumed being at the same $0.04/GB is rather steep”
“Congrats on the launch btw!”
“IMO using K2 on its own doesn't make sense”
“Having a cost efficient fully serverless Kafka compatible service would be great”
“merging them together through object storage is a highly appealing package”
“Making the individual stream really cheap and easy is a big simplification”
“I'm always reluctant to build on anything that isn't a portable industry standard.”
“we have a big leg up on folks building on top of S3”
“Great product, congratulation on launch.”
“The primary benefit of K2 is cost, particularly for longer retention periods.”
“Pretty useful if your volume is not into multi-GB's a month.”
“fills a hole that was really needed”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.