Use Chargeback - Conduktor Docs

Enterprise

Overview

Chargeback shows Kafka costs across five axes — storage, partitions, ingress, egress and Kafka Connect — and lets you group those costs by cluster, application or label. Each row supports drill-down into topics, service accounts and connectors. For background on the cost axes and the metrics available per cluster type, see Chargeback concepts.

From our blog: Chargeback: attribute and map Kafka costs to your business Practical strategies to tag, trace, and report Kafka spending by team and application.

Set up Chargeback

The first time an administrator opens the Chargeback page, an onboarding wizard runs through two steps:

Set cost rates

For each cluster, enter the unit costs that match your provider pricing or internal infrastructure model:

Field	Unit	Required
Bytes stored	$/GB/hour	Yes
Partitions	$/partition/hour	Yes
Ingress	$/GB	No
Egress	$/GB	No
Connector task hour	$/task/hour	No

Each value supports up to eight decimal places, with a maximum of 9.99999999. Leaving ingress, egress or connector task hour empty is the same as 0.The connector task hour cost is the default rate applied to every Kafka Connect connector task on the cluster. To charge different rates per connector type, add a per-connector-class override (for example, a higher rate for an S3 sink connector than for a JDBC source connector). An override takes precedence over the default for connectors of that class.

Select Chargeback Labels

Pick the label keys you want to group costs by (for example, team, cost-center, env).Only labels currently attached to topics or service accounts are offered. Conduktor-defined labels (the conduktor.io/* namespace) are excluded.You can skip this step and add Chargeback Labels later from the settings drawer.

After both steps are saved, Console begins applying these rates to the metrics already collected.

View costs

Use the filter bar at the top of the page to control what’s displayed.

Control	What it does
View by	Group rows by Cluster, Application, Application Instance, or one of the configured Chargeback Labels
Show	Pick which cost columns to display (Overall, Storage, Partitions, Connect, Ingress, Egress)
Period	Switch between 7D, 30D, 6M, 12M and YTD
Search	Narrow the rows by name match within the current view

The chart at the top shows the totals for the active view across the selected period. The table below lists each entity with its measured value, calculated cost and percentage of the total.

Drill into topics and service accounts

Each row in the Cluster, Application Instance and Label views can be expanded to show the topics, service accounts and connectors that contributed to it.

Topics: storage, partitions, ingress and egress per topic
Service accounts: ingress and egress per service account
Connectors: connect cost per connector, grouped by Kafka Connect cluster, with the connector class shown

Service account drill-downs depend on the cluster type, and connector drill-downs require the cluster to have Kafka Connect configured. See the cluster-type capability matrix in Chargeback concepts.

How metrics are calculated

Metrics are stored as raw counters and costs are computed at query time. Updating a unit cost takes effect immediately across all historical periods.

storage_cost = (byte_hours / 1,073,741,824) × bytes_stored_per_hour_cost

1,073,741,824 is one GB in bytes (1024³). byte_hours accumulates from periodic snapshots: each snapshot multiplies the topic’s current retained bytes by the snapshot interval expressed in hours.

partition_cost = partition_hours × partition_count_per_hour_cost

partition_hours accumulates the same way as byte_hours — each snapshot multiplies the topic’s partition count by the snapshot interval in hours.

ingress_cost = (received_bytes / 1,073,741,824) × ingress_cost_per_gb

received_bytes is sourced from the Confluent Cloud Metrics API for Confluent Cloud clusters, and from the Gateway observability Interceptor for Gateway clusters.

egress_cost = (sent_bytes / 1,073,741,824) × egress_cost_per_gb

sent_bytes follows the same source rules as received_bytes.

connect_cost = task_hours × connector_task_hour_cost

task_hours accumulates the running time of each Kafka Connect connector’s tasks over the period. connector_task_hour_cost is the per-connector-class override when one matches the connector’s class, otherwise the cluster’s default connector task hour cost.

total_cost = storage_cost + partition_cost + ingress_cost + egress_cost + connect_cost

Axes that aren’t measurable for the cluster type contribute 0. For example, a vanilla Kafka cluster with no Kafka Connect contributes only storage and partitions to its total.

The accuracy of storage and partition metrics depends on the snapshot frequency. A shorter interval captures more granular usage; a longer interval may miss short-lived spikes.Deleting a cluster removes its Chargeback metrics.

Update cost rates and labels

Click the settings (cog) icon at the top right of the Chargeback page to open the settings drawer:

General tab: edit cost rates per cluster, or add a new cluster row
Chargeback Labels tab: add or remove the label keys eligible for grouping

Both tabs save independently.

Export data

Click Export in the filter bar to download the current view as a CSV. The export reflects the active View by, Show selections, Period and Search, so only data matching your current view is included. The default file name is Chargeback_<startDate>_<endDate>_<view>.csv. The granularity of the exported series matches the selected period: 7D and 30D split by day, 6M, 12M and YTD split by month.

Permissions

Action	Required permission
View costs and drill-downs	Can view Chargeback (`PlatformChargebackView`)
Set cost rates	Can manage Chargeback (`PlatformChargebackManage`)
Select Chargeback Labels	Can manage Chargeback (`PlatformChargebackManage`)

Console shows cost attribution for all clusters regardless of the cluster-level permissions assigned to the user.

​Overview

​Set up Chargeback

​View costs

​Drill into topics and service accounts

​How metrics are calculated

​Update cost rates and labels

​Export data

​Permissions

​Related resources

Overview

Set up Chargeback

View costs

Drill into topics and service accounts

How metrics are calculated

Update cost rates and labels

Export data

Permissions

Related resources