The Apache project publishes a binary tarball and, since Kafka 3.7 129 , two official Docker 514 images; other images are vendors' packaging of the same code.
| Distribution | Licence | Status (2 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| kafka_2.13-4.3.1.tgz tarball | Apache 2.0 | Needs Java 17 or later; scripts in bin/ |
| apache/kafka:4.3.1 (JVM) | Apache 2.0 | Official image, 686 MB, Java 21 inside |
| apache/kafka-native:4.3.1 | Apache 2.0 | GraalVM native, 208 MB, experimental |
| confluentinc/cp-kafka:8.3.2 | Apache 2.0 (Kafka) | Confluent 17,245 Platform 8.x packaging |
| bitnami/kafka | Apache 2.0 (Kafka) | Frozen in bitnamilegacy since Aug 2025 |
On this shared 4-CPU host the JVM image took 6.0 s to log Kafka Server started and used 286 MiB at idle, the native image 1.1 s and 186 MiB; the project supports the native one for development and testing only. Old Compose files that pull bitnami/kafka need replacing: Bitnami moved its free images to the unmaintained bitnamilegacy repository in August 2025. On Kubernetes 5,150 , the Strimzi 326,081 operator (1.2.0, Apache 2.0) runs Kafka for you.