# Azure Event Hubs

> Managed Azure streaming that speaks the Kafka protocol

Azure Event Hubs is Microsoft's fully managed event streaming platform, natively supporting the Apache Kafka protocol alongside AMQP and HTTPS so existing Kafka workloads run without code changes or cluster management.

Website: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/event-hubs

## Use it when

- Your platform is Azure and you want managed streaming that Stream Analytics, Functions, and Data Explorer plug into natively.
- Existing Kafka producers and consumers should connect unchanged, without a Kafka cluster existing anywhere; the hub speaks the Kafka protocol from the Standard tier up.
- High-volume telemetry and log ingestion is the job, with Capture continuously landing the stream in Blob Storage or Data Lake without a connector.
- Ops capacity is thin; tiers and throughput units replace brokers and rebalancing.

## Think twice when

- You need long replay windows on a budget: retention is 7 days on Standard and 90 days on Premium and Dedicated.
- Cross-region data replication matters; Standard offers metadata-only disaster recovery, and data replication starts at Premium.
- The workload is transactional enterprise messaging or reactive routing; Microsoft points those at Service Bus and Event Grid instead.

## How it runs

Fully managed: pick a tier, get event hubs (Kafka topics by another name) divided into partitions with consumer groups tracking offsets. Auto-inflate scales throughput units with demand; Dedicated gives reserved clusters. Billing is throughput or processing units plus ingress. Transformations happen downstream in Stream Analytics or Functions.

## Details

### General

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| License | Commercial |
| Deployment | Managed |
| Workload | Streaming |
| Operational complexity | Low |
| Pricing | Subscription |
| Documentation | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/event-hubs/ |

### Event Streaming

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Protocol | Kafka from Standard up, AMQP 1.0 and HTTPS |
| Consumption model | Replayable log; consumer groups track offsets |
| Storage | Managed; Capture writes continuously to Blob or ADLS |
| What you run | Nothing: pick a tier; Dedicated gives reserved clusters |
| Scaling | Throughput units with auto-inflate; processing units on Premium |
| Multi-region | Metadata-only DR on Standard; data replication on Premium and up |
| Delivery guarantee | At-least-once |
| Connectors | Kafka clients and Connect; Capture writes to Blob or ADLS |
| Transformations | None in the hub; use Stream Analytics or Functions |
| Billing unit | Throughput units and ingress events; processing units on Premium |

## Capabilities

- [Event Streaming](https://matca.io/capabilities/event-streaming)

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Source: https://matca.io/azure-event-hubs
Last updated: 2026-08-31T11:40:47.371Z