# RabbitMQ vs Kafka vs Cloud Queues — RabbitMQ

Source: https://www.skillbyai.com/en/rabbitmq/d-compare

> Choose between RabbitMQ, Kafka and managed queue services.

## Different tools for different shapes of work

**RabbitMQ** is a **smart broker**: rich routing with exchanges, per-message acknowledgements, priorities, TTLs, dead-lettering and request-reply. It shines for **task distribution**, **command and event routing** between services, and workloads where messages are consumed and removed, with moderate to high throughput. **Apache Kafka** is a **distributed log**: very high throughput, long retention, replay, partition-based ordering and stream processing ecosystems; consumers track offsets themselves and routing is mostly by topic. RabbitMQ **streams** cover some log-style needs inside RabbitMQ. **Managed cloud services** such as Amazon SQS and SNS, Azure Service Bus and Google Cloud Pub/Sub remove broker operations entirely, with different feature sets and limits; Amazon MQ and some providers also offer managed RabbitMQ. Choose by workload shape (tasks versus event log), routing needs, replay requirements, throughput, ecosystem, and whether your team wants to operate a broker.

## A comparison table

Typical strengths; check current limits of each product for your design.

```text
need                                   RabbitMQ                 Kafka                     SQS / Service Bus / Pub/Sub
-------------------------------------  -----------------------  ------------------------  ---------------------------
flexible routing (topic, headers)      excellent                topics + consumer logic   filters / subscriptions
per-message ack, retries, DLQ          built in                 consumer-managed offsets  built in
replay old messages                    streams                  core feature              limited / seek features
very high throughput, long retention   streams: good            excellent                 good, provider limits
priorities, TTL, delayed delivery      yes                      no (build yourself)       varies
operations burden                      run it (or managed)      run it (or managed)       none (fully managed)
```

## Pick by consumption model

If consumers take a task and it disappears when done, think queue (RabbitMQ, SQS). If many consumers read and re-read an ordered history, think log (Kafka, RabbitMQ streams).

**Quiz:** Which requirement points most strongly towards a log-based system such as Kafka (or RabbitMQ streams) rather than classic queues?

- [ ] Per-message priorities
- [ ] A simple background email job
- [x] Many consumers replaying months of ordered events
- [ ] Request-reply with correlation IDs

*Answer:* Many consumers replaying months of ordered events. Long retention with replay by many independent consumers is the defining strength of logs.