Event-Driven Microservices: Kafka or RabbitMQ?

Event-Driven Microservices

Event-driven approach in modern architectures; Loose bonding provides scale and durability. The two most frequently discussed options are: Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ.

When is Kafka?

• High throughput, stream processing, long-term retention
• Event replay and consumer groups

When is RabbitMQ?

• Transaction-oriented queues, routing, and flexible ACK models
• Simpler setup and management

Anti-Patterns

• Embedding large JSON in the event payload; not doing schema management
• Scale the consumer without establishing idempotency

decision; It should be given together with the workload characteristics and the competencies of your operations team.