Alternatives to Conduktor Playground

We no longer host the Kafka Playground, but here are free alternatives to get started with Kafka.

Coming from Apache Kafka Series — Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners v3?

Keep reading! This is important. We've removed Conduktor Playground, so you'll need to update your playground.config to follow the course without interruption.

Conduktor Free Kafka Playground has shut down

We are sorry to announce that our Free Kafka Playground has been removed. But fear not, there are free alternatives.

Option 1: Local Kafka

Run a Kafka cluster & Conduktor locally on your laptop. One command if you have Docker installed. Recommended.

Option 2: Aiven Cloud

Connect to a free cloud provider. Requires more steps due to SSL security, but no local setup needed.

Note: If you're already comfortable with Kafka, you can use any alternative: Confluent, Aiven, AWS MSK, Strimzi, Redpanda.

Option 1: Run a local Kafka cluster

Fastest and simplest — recommended for most users.

1. Run Conduktor (and Kafka) with Docker

Follow the course to install Conduktor UI with Docker (lecture #57) or follow our Get Started guide. You will need Docker installed.

curl -fL https://releases.conduktor.io/quick-start | docker compose -f - up

2. Connect to the local Kafka cluster

After running the command, you'll have a local Kafka cluster on localhost:19092. No security configured, so you can interact directly:

kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server localhost:19092 --list

You should see topics created by the Conduktor stack. Return to the course.

3. Destroy the local stack

When finished, run this in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml:

docker compose down -v

Option 2: Create a cloud Kafka cluster

Using Aiven's free tier — requires SSL configuration.

1. Create your Aiven account

Go to console.aiven.io/signup, register and verify your account.

2. Create your free Kafka cluster

Choose the Apache Kafka service. Use default options, but change authentication to SASL (toggle at the bottom).

3. Create kafka-client.config

The Aiven cluster uses SSL. Save this as kafka-client.config:

bootstrap.servers=<service-uri>
security.protocol=SASL_SSL
sasl.mechanism=SCRAM-SHA-256
sasl.jaas.config=org.apache.kafka.common.security.scram.ScramLoginModule required username='<username>' password='<password>';
ssl.truststore.location=certificate.pem
ssl.truststore.type=PEM
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm=

4. Create certificate.pem

Find the CA certificate in Aiven connection details. Copy and save as certificate.pem.

5. Connect to the cluster

kafka-topics.sh --bootstrap-server <your-bootstrap-server> --list --command-config kafka-client.config

6. Connect Conduktor to Aiven

Add your cluster at localhost:8080/settings/clusters. Test the connection — you're ready!

You're ready to continue!

We've shown how to connect Conduktor and the CLI to a Kafka cluster, whether local or cloud.

Questions? Contact us at support@conduktor.io. Happy learning!