streaming
11 articles on streaming — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
Pub/Sub cost explained: what $40 per TiB actually buys you
Pub/Sub prices throughput at a flat rate per TiB with no shards to provision, which is either a bargain or a trap depending on your fan out factor and retention settings. Here is the full meter list.
CDC pipeline cost: what change data capture actually charges you for
Change data capture replaces expensive full table reloads with a stream of row level changes, but it introduces its own meters: connector compute, log retention, stream throughput, and merge cost at the sink.
How much does it cost to run a video streaming service?
A streaming service with a 10,000 hour library and a million viewing hours a month costs about 33,680 dollars on AWS, and 89 percent of that is CDN egress. Here is the breakdown, and why bitrate is the only number that really matters.
Managed vs self-hosted Kafka cost: when to run your own
A managed Kafka service removes the operational burden but charges a premium; self-hosting on your own instances is cheaper per unit but demands real operational effort. Which wins depends on scale and how much of a platform team you have. Here is the comparison with numbers.
Kafka vs Kinesis cost: streaming pricing models compared
Self-managed Kafka, MSK, and Kinesis price streaming very differently: broker instances plus replication transfer versus shards or throughput units. The cheapest choice depends on throughput, retention, and how much operational work you want. Here is the breakdown.
Streaming vs batch data processing: the cost of freshness
Streaming processes data continuously for low-latency freshness, keeping compute always running; batch processes in scheduled bulk runs on transient compute. When data does not need to be fresh instantly, batch is far cheaper. Here is the tradeoff.
Kafka cost optimization: brokers, storage, and managed vs self-hosted
Kafka cost is the broker compute, the storage of retained messages, cross-AZ replication transfer, and (if managed) the service premium. Retention, right-sized brokers, and tiered storage cut it. Here is how.
Azure Stream Analytics cost: you pay for streaming units
Stream Analytics bills per streaming unit-hour, the provisioned capacity that runs your streaming query, whether or not data flows. Right-sizing streaming units to real throughput and stopping idle jobs are the levers. Here is the model.
Azure Event Hubs cost: throughput units vs Premium and Dedicated
Event Hubs Standard bills throughput units by the hour plus per-million ingress events; Premium and Dedicated allocate reserved capacity. Under-provision throughput units and you throttle; over-provision and you overpay. Here is how to size it.
AWS Kinesis Data Firehose cost: per GB ingested, plus conversions
Firehose charges about $0.029 per GB ingested (first 500 TB/month), with extra for format conversion and VPC delivery. Cost tracks data volume, so batching and compression before ingest are the main levers. Here is the breakdown.
MSK vs Kinesis cost: the broker floor that decides it
Kinesis scales down to a single shard with no real floor; MSK runs brokers 24/7 ($400+/month for a 3-broker cluster). Here's the crossover by throughput and the Kafka-ecosystem angle.