Deep comparison of Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, Pulsar, NATS, along with delivery semantics, consumer group rebalancing, and DLQ patterns.
Messaging Systems Deep Dive
Enterprise Messaging Matrix
| Platform | Architecture | Ordering | Retention | Throughput |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka | Distributed Commit Log (Partitioned) | Strict within Partition | Log retention by Time/Size/Compaction | Ultra High (1M+ msg/sec) |
| RabbitMQ | AMQP Broker (Exchanges & Queues) | Per Queue basis | Deleted upon Consumer ACK | High (~50k msg/sec) |
| AWS SQS | Managed Queue (Standard vs FIFO) | FIFO mode only | Up to 14 days | Scalable Cloud Managed |
| Apache Pulsar | Stateless Broker + BookKeeper Storage | Per Partition / Key | Tiered Cloud Storage (S3) | Ultra High |
| NATS JetStream | Lightweight Go PubSub Engine | Stream subject ordering | Configurable Stream storage | Ultra High (Low latency) |