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Apache Kafka Series - Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners v3 (Udemy.com)

START HERE: Learn Apache Kafka 4.0 Ecosystem, Core Concepts, Real World Java Producers/Consumers & Big Data Architecture

4.6
54,204 reviews

Created by: Stephane Maarek

Last updated September 2026

Our take

Based on the ratings of 54,204 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in September 2026. No course pays to be reviewed.

Stéphane Maarek's Kafka course is the front door to his wider Kafka series, and the numbers back that up: over 300,000 students and about 54,000 reviews averaging 4.6. It runs 8.3 hours across 123 lectures. The syllabus moves from theory and local setup to CLI practice, then Java producers and consumers, and finally a Wikimedia to OpenSearch project. It is aimed at developers with some Java who want fundamentals, plus architects who just need to understand where Kafka fits.

Reviewers praise the neat, easy explanations and say they came away more comfortable and confident with Kafka. One calls the Java section nicely designed as long as you know basic Java. About 93 percent of ratings are four or five stars. The complaints are mostly about age. Some older videos use the Conduktor Playground, which no longer exists, and a few students lost time hunting for current steps. Others miss downloadable slides, and one finds the jump between videos right after setup confusing.

The setup videos were redone for Kafka 4.0 and the course was last updated in September 2026, so the core material is current. Treat it as a foundation, not a deep dive. Kafka Connect and Kafka Streams get only about half an hour of overview. For a developer starting from zero, it is the sensible first Kafka course, but budget a little extra time for older screens that no longer match.

Best forJava developers new to Kafka who want theory, CLI practice and one real producer and consumer project.
Skip it ifYou want a deep Streams or Connect course, or need every demo to match today's tools exactly.

Pros

  • Clear, patient explanations that leave reviewers feeling confident with Kafka
  • Theory, local setup, CLI tools and Java all fit into one 8.3 hour path
  • Wikimedia to OpenSearch project ties producers and consumers together
  • Setup videos redone for Kafka 4.0 and the course updated in September 2026

Cons

  • Some older videos use the retired Conduktor Playground and confuse people
  • No slides provided, and one early quiz asks about topics not yet taught
  • Kafka Connect and Streams get only a short overview, not real depth
Explained the topics neatly in an easy to understand fashion. Kafka Java Programming 101 is also elegantly designed and easy to understand if you have basic understanding of Java.
Srinivas Kalyan, a student

Listed for all levels, but it assumes some Java and helps to know the Linux command line. No prior Kafka knowledge needed.

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What you will learn

  • Understand Apache Kafka Ecosystem, Architecture, Core Concepts and Operations
  • Master Concepts such as Topics, Partitions, Brokers, Producers, Consumers
  • Start a personal Kafka development environment
  • Learn major CLIs: kafka-topics, kafka-console-producer, kafka-console-consumer, kafka-consumer-groups, kafka-configs
  • Create your Producers and Consumers in Java to interact with Kafka
  • Program a Real World Twitter Producer & ElasticSearch Consumer
  • Extended APIs Overview (Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams), Case Studies and Big Data Architecture
  • Practice and Understand Log Compaction

Course content

18 sections · 123 lectures · 8.4 hours of video 6 quizzes, 11 articles

  1. 1Kafka Introduction 4 free previews4 lectures · 15 min
  2. 2Code Download1 lecture
  3. 3====== Kafka Fundamentals ======1 lecture
  4. 4Kafka Theory 9 free previews10 lectures · 1 quiz · 46 min
  5. 5Starting Kafka 1 free preview13 lectures · 47 min
  6. 6[Archive] Starting Kafka with Zookeeper + Windows non WSL-25 lectures · 20 min
  7. 7CLI (Command Line Interface) 101 6 free previews9 lectures · 1 quiz · 45 min
  8. 8Kafka UI - Conduktor Demo 1 free preview1 lecture · 5 min
  9. 9Kafka Java Programming 10112 lectures · 1 quiz · 1.3 hours
  10. 10===== Kafka Real World Project =====2 lectures · 2 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Developers who want to learn the Apache Kafka Fundamentals, start a cluster and write their first application
  • Architects who want to understand how Apache Kafka fits into their solution architecture
  • Anyone looking to learn the full theory of how Apache Kafka works as a distributed system

What you need before you start

  • A recent Windows / Mac / Linux machine with minimum 4GB of RAM, 5 GB of disk space
  • Some understanding of Java Programming
  • Good to have knowledge about Linux command line
  • Desire to learn something awesome and new!

How it compares

Against the other 388 rated Udemy courses in SQL on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 69% of them
  • Reviews54,204#5 of 389 by number of reviews
  • Length8.3 hourslonger than 61% of them
  • Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 96% of them

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Course Description

UPDATE AUGUST 2025: The Kafka Setup videos have been updated with Kafka 4.0!


UPDATE MARCH 2022: Course newly recorded with Kafka 3.0!

Welcome to the Apache Kafka Series! Join a community of 130,000+ students learning Kafka.

Apache Kafka has become the leading distributed data streaming enterprise big data technology. Kafka is used in production by over 33% of the Fortune 500 companies such as Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, Walmart and LinkedIn.

To learn Kafka easily, step-by-step, you have come to the right place! No prior Kafka knowledge is required


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If you look at the documentation, you can see that Apache Kafka is not easy to learn...

Thanks to my several years of experience in Kafka and Big Data, I wanted to make learning Kafka accessible to everyone.

We'll take a step-by-step approach to learn all the fundamentals of Apache Kafka.
At the end of this course, you'll be productive and you'll know the following:

  • The Apache Kafka Ecosystem Architecture

  • The Kafka Core Concepts: Topics, Partitions, Brokers, Replicas, Producers, Consumers, and more!

  • Launch your own Kafka cluster in no time using native Kafka binaries – Windows / MacOS X / Linux 

  • Learn and Practice using the Kafka Command Line Interface (CLI)

  • Code Producer and Consumers using the Java API 

  • Real world project using Wikimedia as a source of data for a producer and OpenSearch as a sink for our consumer

  • Overview of Advanced APIs (Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams)

  • Real World Case Studies and Big  Use cases

  • Overview of Advanced Kafka for Administrators

  • Advanced Topic Configurations

Note: The hands-on section is based on Java, which is the native Kafka programming language. But, good news! Your learning in Java will be completely applicable to other programming languages, such as Python, C#, Node.js or Scala, and Big Data frameworks such as Spark, NiFi or Akka

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The Kafka for Beginners course is the best place to start your Kafka learning journey... Ask other students!

  • 5 stars: "That's one of the most high-quality on-line courses I ever took" – Paul L.

  • 5 stars: "This training was awesome and learned many things about KAFKA though having 0 years of experience in this technology" – Puneet G.

  • 5 stars: "Outstanding on all fronts! I wish all courses were that well presented. I especially appreciate the hands-on sections. I was able to get everything up and running with ease. Highly recommend this course and this instructor!" – David G.   

You can take this course risk-free and if you don't like it, you can get a refund anytime in the first 30 days!

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Instructor


My name is Stéphane Maarek, I am passionate about Data Streaming & Cloud Computing, and I will be your instructor in this course. I teach about Apache Kafka, the Kafka ecosystem, and Kafka Certifications, focusing on helping my students improve their professional proficiencies. I am also the co-founder of Conduktor: an enterprise Apache Kafka platform & UI to help everyone use Kafka.

I have already taught 3,000,000+ students and gotten 1,000,000+ reviews throughout my career in designing and delivering best-selling courses!

With Apache Kafka becoming much more than a buzzword out there, I've decided it's time for students to learn how to be Kafka professionals properly. So, let’s kick start the course! You are in good hands!


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This Course Also Comes With:

  • Lifetime Access to All Future Updates

  • A responsive instructor in the Q&A Section

  • Links to interesting articles, and lots of good code to base your next applications onto

  • Udemy Certificate of Completion Ready for Download

This is the course that could improve your career!

Apache Kafka is a skill in high demand and there are not enough people to fulfill all the open positions. You can boost your income, take on new roles and fun challenges. Many of my students are now the Kafka experts of their companies! You can be the next!

I hope to see you inside the course!

--

Note: Looking for more advanced Kafka concepts? There are many volumes in the Apache Kafka Series:

  • Learn Kafka for Beginners v3 (great to start)

  • Kafka Connect Hands On Learning

  • Kafka Streams for Data Processing

  • KSQL on ksqlDB - Hands On!

  • Kafka Cluster Setup & Administration

  • Confluent Schema Registry & Kafka REST Proxy

  • Kafka Security (SSL SASL ACL)

  • Kafka Monitoring and Operations

Happy learning!
Read More All Levels All Levels product length iconTime: 8.3h

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Instructor Details

Stephane Maarek

Stephane is a solutions architect, consultant and software developer that has a particular interest in all things related to Cloud & Big Data. He's also a many-times best seller instructor on Udemy for his courses in AWS and Apache Kafka.


[See FAQ below to see in which order you can take my courses]

Stéphane is recognized as an AWS Hero and is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional & AWS Certified DevOps Professional. He loves to teach people how to use the AWS properly, to get them ready for their AWS certifications, and most importantly for the real world.

He also loves Apache Kafka. He used on the Program Committee organizing the Kafka Summit in New York, London and San Francisco. He also was an active member of the Apache Kafka community, and has authored blogs on Medium and the guest blog for Confluent. He also has co-founded Conduktor, a prominent company in the Kafka ecosystem.


During his spare time, Stéphane composes piano music, that he publishes online under the artist name Makera ?


FAQ: In which order should you learn?...

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Reviews

4.6

54,204 ratings on Udemy

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By Balaji Shanmuga Sundaram on 8/23/2026

Some of the videos in the course are very old and use Conduktor Playground, which no longer exists. This has led to confusion in some of the videos. There is also a localhost equivalent, but the old videos should be re-recorded to avoid the playground altogether, making the course a smooth learning experience

By German Villalba on 7/25/2026

It is well explained with suitable code to follow. One thing that can be improved is that some of the apps shown in the lectures seem to be outdated/different to the new ones. I still do not know how to access the cluster shown on the lectures and I am only using localhost.

By Carlos Sebastian Castañeda on 6/10/2026

Good course with a reasonable balance between time and what you learn. I really like how the instructor organize the readings. Overall it is a good course to have an initial knowledge in Kafka and be able to start implementing some applications using this technology.

By Amritesh Chandan on 5/22/2026

Amazing course for beginners. Hands-on code is in vanilla low-level using KafkaProducer & KafkaConsumer classes, which is great and gives complete control. But, I expected one more thing from the course. As most modern Java application is being written using Spring Boot framework, it would have been great if the course included hands-on code using Spring Boot framework too with configuration in application.properties and code using KafkaTemplate.

By Sumi Jain on 5/20/2026

Amazing course ! I have learned so much. I have been working with kafka for quite a long time now, but still there are small details and configuration that can make a lot of differences. After finishing this course, i feel like there is more to explore on kafka and would love to go through the other courses on this series with you !! Cheers !!

By Siddhant Wankhade on 5/1/2026

The course is so well structured that there is not one single topic that we wouldnt understand. I started this course with no knowledge of Kafka and now I can implement Kafka in my Spring Boot Projects Confidently. Thanks to Stepane for this amazing course.

By Harshit Khanna on 4/24/2026

Brilliant and a very effective course. Only feedback is that in a few lectures which are a bit tough to understand, it would be really appreciated if you can reduce your speed of talk. Sorry but it's a bit faster sometimes for me and sometimes was tough to be upto speed while understanding what you just said :) Great work about the content. Stay blessed.

By Chris Addison on 4/21/2026

Great course to gain knowledge and understanding of Kafka. The course provides plenty of hands-on practical exercises to enable you to gain an understanding of Kafka and was very well structured and went at a very good pace. Stephane uses great examples and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

By Jesús Alfredo Hernández Orozco on 4/15/2026

Great course! You must take it if you want to learn Karka. There is a module that personally I didn't like (the one related to arquitecture) because that one should explain more about architecture patterns and how kafka is integrated in those. I recommend the course.

By Stole P on 3/27/2026

It is a bit scary in the start when talking about conduktor and seeing that the mentioned version is not even available. Another issue is - Click to Download Resources and you are taken to a page that has "First Part" and "Second Part", but you are at section 8 referring you to section 2. A bit more information needs to be provided that, if running on Windows WSL, it will run outside of your windows localhost. There are some issues, but, trying to resolve them makes you learn a bit more about everything (Yes, it is also frustrating)

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Overall Score : 92 / 100

Apache Kafka Series - Learn Apache Kafka for Beginners v3
Visit course on Udemy Write a review
  • Video Duration: icon 8.3h
  • Price: $99.99
  • Provider: icon Udemy
  • Updated: icon September 2026
  • Level: All Levels All Levels
  • Language: icon English
  • Certificate: icon Yes
  • Lectures:123 in 18 sections
  • Practice:6 quizzes
  • Students:301,300
  • Subtitles:29 languages
  • Udemy badge:Bestseller
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