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Passthrough Gateway is a license-restricted mode of Conduktor Gateway. Gateway forwards Kafka client connections 1:1 to brokers and translates broker addresses, without storing credentials or exposing Gateway-managed features. Use Passthrough Gateway when you need to:
  • Make privately accessible brokers (such as Confluent Cloud dedicated clusters or Google Cloud managed Kafka) reachable from outside their private network segment.
  • Add or change advertised listener addresses without reconfiguring broker listeners.
Passthrough Gateway requires a separate license from a standard Conduktor Gateway license. See Obtain a Passthrough Gateway license.

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What’s included

Conduktor Gateway runs in Kafka-managed mode. Gateway forwards client connections 1:1 to brokers, and clients authenticate using their SASL credentials, which the Kafka broker validates. Gateway does not store or validate credentials.

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What’s not included

The following Gateway capabilities are unavailable under a Passthrough Gateway license:
  • Interceptors
  • Topic views
  • Alias topics
  • Virtual Clusters
  • Gateway service accounts
  • Gateway groups
  • Topic concentration
  • Failover

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Configure Passthrough Gateway

Deploy Gateway as a Kafka-managed proxy.
Passthrough Gateway supports Kafka-managed security, which is compatible with SASL_PLAINTEXT and SASL_SSL only.
Apply the license the same way as any other Gateway license:
.env
GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY="<YOUR_PASSTHROUGH_LICENSE>"
See Licensing overview for verification and renewal.

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Restrictions

A Passthrough Gateway license enforces three customer-visible restrictions:
  • Disallowed configuration prevents startup. If Gateway starts with configuration that requires an excluded feature (such as Interceptors or Virtual Clusters), it refuses to start and logs the offending configuration.
  • Disallowed Admin API calls return 403. Admin API calls that create or modify excluded features return 403 Forbidden. The response identifies the disallowed feature.
  • Product-usage metrics cannot be disabled. Passthrough Gateway deployments report anonymous product-usage metrics to Conduktor. The reporting cannot be disabled from within Gateway.

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Obtain a Passthrough Gateway license

To request a Passthrough Gateway license, see conduktor.io/gateway.