Broker Selection: Kafka, RabbitMQ, and NATS JetStream¶
Choose a broker from workload semantics and measured failure behavior, not popularity.
flowchart LR J[Junior: log vs queue] --> M[Middle: compare semantics] --> S[Senior: selection mistakes] --> P[Professional: fleet scale]flowchart TD Workload --> Kafka[Durable replay log] Workload --> Rabbit[Flexible work routing] Workload --> NATS[Low-latency streams]| Level | Guide | You are done when | |---|---|---| | Junior | Definition and why | You can distinguish log, queue, and stream needs. | | Middle | How they work | You can compare matched guarantees. | | Senior | Failures and mistakes | You can test slow consumers and failover. | | Professional | Best practices and scale | You can make an evidence-based platform choice. | Practice rule: Compare brokers under identical durability, payload, and acknowledgement settings.