Kafka is core infrastructure—but most teams still struggle to manage it with the same clarity they expect from other parts of their stack. Costs are hard to trace and access is hard to scale.

This release brings more structure to how teams run Kafka day to day. With label-based Chargeback, richer support for enterprise authentication methods in our Kafka proxy, and better control over Confluent Cloud and Aiven service account management, Conduktor makes it easier to manage cost, access, and scale—without slowing teams down.

Let’s get into the details.

Cost Attribution Aligned to Your Business

Service account–based chargeback is a solid starting point—but it only tells part of the story. It works well for technical tracking, but when you need to report spend by business unit, environment, or project, it quickly falls short. It lacks the context business teams need to attribute resource usage back to a meaningful origin.

Chargeback is now Generally Available as part of our Scale Plus package, with full support for user-defined labels—so you can align Kafka cost reporting with how your organization actually operates.

With label-based Chargeback, now you can group usage by team, environment, project—or anything that maps to your org structure. Add metadata labels to service accounts, and get meaningful cost breakdowns that help FinOps teams plan better and hold teams accountable.

What you can expect:

• Cost clarity that makes sense: Tag usage by team, project, or environment—not just raw service accounts.

• Reporting finance teams won’t ignore: Break down Kafka spend in a way that supports planning, budgeting, and accountability.

• Less overhead for platform teams: Track and manage usage across multiple services and teams without digging through configs.

This change allows everyone—from finance to platform teams—to align on Kafka cost control.

Service Account Management for Confluent Cloud & Aiven

Managing service accounts across cloud providers shouldn’t feel like guesswork.

You can now view, manage, and label Confluent Cloud and Aiven service accounts directly through the API, with full metadata support. This makes it easier to group accounts by function, team, or project—giving you cleaner governance and tighter control.

Why it matters:

• Centralized visibility across multi-cloud Kafka deployments.

• Use labels to organize accounts for cost tracking and governance.

• Reduce manual cleanup and config drift over time.

Rename Shared Topics in Partner Zones

We continue to improve Conduktor Exchange as a secure and efficient way to share streaming data externally without duplication.

With this update, you can now add aliases to shared topics in Partner Zones. This prevents exposing internal naming conventions or sensitive data. You get full control over what’s visible to external teams, without needing to replicate or rename anything in your internal Kafka setup.

Why it matters:

• Protect internal naming conventions when sharing data

• Prevent accidental exposure of sensitive topic names

• Avoid unnecessary topic duplication across zones

Cleaner collaboration, without compromising structure or security.

Secure Kafka Access That Matches Your Identity Strategy

Adopting Conduktor’s proxy to get all the unique benefits of a centralized Kafka gateway shouldn’t mean redoing your entire security model. Many teams already rely on IAM or enterprise OAuth—and we want to make it as easy as possible for them to get all the value Conduktor delivers without having to change their existing applications.

With Delegated OAuth and MSK IAM support, Conduktor Gateway now works with the identity systems you already use to accelerate adoption across teams. You don’t need to change what’s working. Just point apps to Conduktor and keep your existing auth flows in place.

What this unlocks:

• Secure, granular access using standard enterprise auth flows

• Full support for IAM-based auth on Amazon MSK

• Easier onboarding for existing apps—no changes to your identity setup

It’s one less thing to worry about. Get the most out of Conduktor and stay in sync with your enterprise identity strategy.

For a full list please read the change log.