Snowflake Kafka Connector v4.0 GA Announcement — April 2026

Official Snowflake release note for Kafka Connector v4.0 general availability.

Key facts surfaced (2026-05-20):

• GA date: April 20, 2026.
• Ground-up rewrite built on Snowflake Snowpipe Streaming architecture.
• Performance: up to 10 GB/s throughput per table with 5–10 second end-to-end latency.
• Delivery guarantees: exactly-once and ordered delivery semantics.
• Pricing: flat, throughput-based pricing (GB-based), replacing per-file Snowpipe pricing.
• New capabilities: server-side validation, schema evolution, in-flight transformations via PIPE objects, pre-clustering, Iceberg table auto-detection, Error Tables and Dead Letter Queue (DLQ).
• Migration: seamless from both Snowpipe and Snowpipe Streaming v3 modes; offset migration supported; downgrade back to v3 supported with deduplication guidance.
• Deprecation: formal deprecation announcement for v3 planned mid-2026, followed by 18-month migration window.
• New connector class: com.snowflake.kafka.connector.SnowflakeStreamingSinkConnector.
• Curriculum reference: Module 15 curriculum update context; grounds TC-88 capability.streaming-ingestion v3/v4 distinction.