> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.conduktor.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Console Community Edition

> Console Community Edition is Conduktor's free self-hosted tier. Manage up to 3 Kafka clusters and 50 users with core Console features and no time limit.

No license key is needed: Console runs in Community Edition mode when no `CDK_LICENSE` environment variable is set.

If you're currently using the Community license, these limits will apply only when you upgrade to Console v1.43.0 and above.

## What's included

Community Edition gives access to Console for **up to 50 users** and **3 clusters**.

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Core Kafka management">
    | Feature                            | Included |
    | ---------------------------------- | -------- |
    | Topic management (CRUD)            | ✓        |
    | Topic activity metrics             | ✓        |
    | Schema Registry management         | ✓        |
    | Consumer group management          | ✓        |
    | Kafka Connect management           | ✓        |
    | ksqlDB management                  | ✓        |
    | ACL and service account management | ✓        |
    | Labels                             | ✓        |
    | Multi-cluster management (up to 3) | ✓        |
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Data exploration">
    | Feature                    | Included |
    | -------------------------- | -------- |
    | Search and filter messages | ✓        |
    | JavaScript/JQ filters      | ✓        |
    | SQL queries on topics      | ✓        |
    | Produce messages           | ✓        |
    | Message export             | ✓        |
    | Live tail                  | ✓        |
    | JSON/Avro/Protobuf support | ✓        |
    | Custom serializers         | ✓        |
    | Message sharing            | ✓        |
    | DLQ/Reprocess messages     | ✓        |
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Monitoring">
    Monitoring in the UI is restricted to showing data for to the last hour only.

    | Feature                    | Included |
    | -------------------------- | -------- |
    | Real-time cluster metrics  | ✓        |
    | Real-time broker stats     | ✓        |
    | Real-time consumer lag     | ✓        |
    | Consumer lag visualization | ✓        |
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Access control">
    | Feature               | Included |
    | --------------------- | -------- |
    | Basic user RBAC       | ✓        |
    | SSO via OIDC/SAML     | ✓        |
    | LDAP/Active Directory | ✓        |
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Automation">
    | Feature                     | Included |
    | --------------------------- | -------- |
    | REST API (OpenAPI)          | ✓        |
    | API keys/token management   | ✓        |
    | CLI tool                    | ✓        |
    | Email notifications         | ✓        |
    | Slack integration           | ✓        |
    | Microsoft Teams integration | ✓        |
    | Webhook support             | ✓        |
    | MCP                         | ✓        |
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Insights">
    | Feature      | Included |
    | ------------ | -------- |
    | Topics       | ✓        |
    | Cost control | ✓        |
    | VIP topics   | ✓        |
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## What's not included

The following capabilities require a paid plan:

| Category     | Features                                                                  |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Monitoring   | Historical metrics, alerting, Prometheus integration                      |
| Security     | Data masking, audit logs, external group sync, user inactivity management |
| Governance   | Self-service catalogs, approval workflows, topic ownership, data lineage  |
| Automation   | Terraform provider, GitOps integration, auto connector restart            |
| Intelligence | Chargeback, cost optimization, cluster utilization analytics              |
| Enterprise   | Multi-tenancy, disaster recovery, dedicated support                       |

## When to upgrade

**Your team is growing**

* More than 50 users need access to Conduktor
* You need to manage more than 3 Kafka clusters
* Multiple teams need isolated access with group-based permissions

**You're running in production**

* You need historical metrics to troubleshoot issues that happened hours or days ago
* You want alerts for consumer lag, broker health or custom conditions
* You need Prometheus integration for centralized monitoring
* Automatic connector restart is required for reliability

**You need governance and compliance**

* Audit logs are required for compliance or security reviews
* Data masking is needed to protect sensitive information
* You want Self-service catalogs so teams can request resources without waiting
* Approval workflows are needed to control access to production topics

**You're scaling automation**

* Infrastructure as code with Terraform is part of your workflow
* You need GitOps integration for declarative resource management
* Cost allocation and Chargeback reporting is required for internal billing

**You need enterprise support**

* Dedicated support with SLAs for faster issue resolution
* Disaster recovery and multi-tenancy for large-scale deployments

[Contact us](https://conduktor.io/contact) to discuss your requirements.