Streaming & Messaging · Integration
Apache Kafka
Add Apache Kafka to your product for your customers, and give your AI agents governed access to it.
Embed an Apache Kafka integration so your customers can stream events between their own cluster and your product without you running a consumer per customer. Each customer connects their own brokers and topics, so credentials and data stay theirs and access is scoped per tenant. Messages reach your product through event delivery rather than polling, and are deduplicated per event so a retry after a network failure does not process the same record twice.
In your product
Embedded for your customers. Per-tenant auth, no per-customer code, maintained by fastn.
Let customers connect their own cluster so your product consumes from the topics they choose.
Publish events from your product to a customer's topic so their downstream systems react.
Trigger your workflows when a message lands on a topic, rather than polling on a schedule.
Map each customer's own topic names and message shapes as configuration instead of code.
For your AI agents
Governed, audited access for the agents you build, through the MCP server.
An agent reads recent messages from a topic to explain what a system has been emitting.
An agent publishes a message within governed permissions, with every produce call logged per tenant.
An agent reacts to an event arriving on a topic and runs the next step of a workflow.
Example prompt
Show the last 20 messages on this topic and tell me which ones failed downstream processing.
Set up Apache Kafka in 4 steps
- 01Open the Apache Kafka connector from your fastn dashboard.
- 02Have each customer supply their own broker endpoints and least-privilege credentials.
- 03Map the topics and message shapes your product reads or writes, then enable actions and triggers.
- 04Call them from your product, or expose them to an agent through the MCP server.
Why teams use the Apache Kafka integration
What you get by embedding it with fastn instead of building it yourself.
- Ship an Apache Kafka integration without building it. Your customers connect their own Apache Kafka account inside your product and work their topics, streams and messages there, with no per-customer code on your side.
- Handle the part that actually costs time: ordering and replay are the whole problem: a consumer that falls behind must be able to resume without losing or double-processing. fastn owns the auth, token refresh, rate limits, pagination and breaking-change fixes, so an Apache Kafka update is not your on-call problem.
- One integration serves your product and your agents. The same governed Apache Kafka connection powers in-product features and gives AI agents scoped, audited access, so you move events between your product and your customers' systems without either side polling without wiring it twice.
Used by these teams
Compare with
Confluent Cloud
AWS Kinesis
RabbitMQOften used alongside
Tools the same teams tend to run next to Apache Kafka, across other categories.
Snowflake
Airtable
PostgreSQL
Anthropic ClaudeApache Kafka integration FAQ
How do I add an Apache Kafka integration to my product?
Enable the Apache Kafka connector in your fastn dashboard, then let each customer authenticate their own Apache Kafka account. fastn handles the OAuth flow, token storage and refresh per tenant, so there is no Apache Kafka client code in your app and no per-customer branch in your codebase. Setup is 4 steps.
Do my customers each connect their own Apache Kafka account?
Yes. Every connection is scoped to the individual customer, so each authorises their own Apache Kafka account and only ever sees their own topics, streams and messages. That per-tenant isolation is the point of an embedded integration: you support the long tail of customer setups without maintaining an integration per customer.
Can AI agents use this Apache Kafka integration?
Yes. The same connection is exposed to your agents through the fastn MCP gateway, with permissions scoped per tenant and every call audited. An agent reads recent messages from a topic to explain what a system has been emitting.
Who maintains the Apache Kafka integration?
fastn does. When Apache Kafka changes an endpoint, deprecates a field or alters its auth, the fix lands in the connector rather than in your backlog, and your customers' connections keep working.
Can my product replay Apache Kafka messages after an outage?
Yes, within the retention the customer's own Apache Kafka setup keeps. Consumer position is tracked per tenant, so a consumer that falls behind resumes from where it stopped rather than skipping ahead or starting over, which is the difference between a gap in your data and a duplicate in it.
How is one customer's stream kept separate from another's?
Each customer authorises their own Apache Kafka connection, so topics, credentials and consumer positions are theirs alone. That matters more here than in most integrations, because a misrouted message is delivered before anyone can review it.
What can I build with the Apache Kafka integration?
A common starting point: connect their own cluster so your product consumes from the topics they choose. Teams also use it for the other use cases listed above, and expose it to agents for governed reads and writes.
How much does the Apache Kafka integration cost?
It is included. Pricing is based on connected accounts, not on how many connectors you enable, so adding Apache Kafka does not change your per-connector cost. You can start free with 3 connected accounts.
Add Apache Kafka to your product
Start free with 3 connected accounts. No sales call required, and no per-customer integration code.