---
title: "Feed your data lake with AI-ready tables for 30-50% lower cost"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/feed-your-data-lake-with-ai-ready-tables-for-30-50-lower-cost-mpdjf1hfv
source_url: https://www.confluent.io/blog/tableflow-tco-savings
type: article
source: "Confluent Blog"
published: 2026-05-14T19:46:22.722Z
updated: 2026-05-14T19:46:50.030Z
tags: ["apache-kafka", "etl", "data-lake", "apache-iceberg"]
reading_time: 11
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# Feed your data lake with AI-ready tables for 30-50% lower cost

**[Confluent Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/conf)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Confluent's Tableflow converts Apache Kafka topics directly into analytics-ready tables in Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake formats, eliminating the need for separate sink connectors, ETL jobs, and post-landing compute. By reusing Kafka segments stored in Confluent's Kora engine and converting them to Parquet, Tableflow removes egress charges, reduces Kafka topic storage costs by 67% (no 3x replication), and bundles compaction and schema evolution into a single per-topic-hour fee. Benchmarks against Snowflake Snowpipe, Databricks Delta Live Tables, Amazon S3 Tables, and custom ETL pipelines show 30–50% lower total ingestion costs. A medium-throughput example (10 topics, 1 MBps, 7-day retention) shows monthly costs of ~$2,555 with Tableflow versus $5,063–$6,075 with traditional stacks. Additional benefits include vendor-neutral open table formats, bring-your-own-storage, near-real-time freshness, and shift-left processing via Apache Flink integration. Tiered pricing with up to 90% discounts at scale is announced for later in the month.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.confluent.io/blog/tableflow-tco-savings>

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---

Tags: [#apache-kafka](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-kafka), [#etl](https://daily.dev/tags/etl), [#data-lake](https://daily.dev/tags/data-lake), [#apache-iceberg](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-iceberg)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/feed-your-data-lake-with-ai-ready-tables-for-30-50-lower-cost-mpdjf1hfv)