How to Enable Schema Registry on Kafka Clusters
Validated on 7 Jul 2025 • Last edited on 8 Jul 2025
Kafka is an open-source distributed event and stream-processing platform built to process demanding real-time data feeds. It is inherently scalable, with high throughput and availability.
Managed Kafka clusters support schema registry, a free service you can enable that protects your cluster when sending or receiving incorrect, modified, or corrupt data. Schema registry copies the schema of all data sent by producers into a local cache, then cross-references that schema with the data’s consumers to ensure there is no mismatch. This allows you to discover and enforce your Kafka cluster’s message structures.
You can only enable schema registry on General Purpose Managed Kafka clusters, not ones with shared CPU plans. If you have enabled schema registry on a Kafka cluster and you later want to downscale it to a shared CPU plan, you must first disable schema registry.
Schema registry is available on port 25065 using the same host.
Enable Schema Registry using the Control Panel
To enable schema registry, go to the control panel and click on your Kafka database. Click on the Settings tab, then scroll to the Schema Registry section and click the toggle to On.
You can disable schema registry by clicking the same toggle to Off.
Manage Registries and Schemas using the API
Once you have enabled schema registry, you can use the DigitalOcean API to create a new registry, list schemas, get a schema by name, get a schema by subject version, or delete a schema by subject name.