Kafka vs RabbitMQ vs SQS: how to choose for an event-driven system
Aleksei Chen
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we're designing an event-driven system that needs to handle about 10k messages per second, requiring at-least-once delivery, replayability, and about 5 consumers on the same topic. the main contenders are kafka, rabbitmq, and sqs.
kafka gives us the replayability and throughput, but the operational overhead of managing zookeeper/kraft and brokers feels significant for a team our size. rabbitmq is simpler to operate and good for fan-out, but replayability isn't a first-class feature, and scaling can be tricky. sqs is managed, which is attractive, but its limitations on message size, batching, and strict ordering sometimes makes it feel less flexible. what are people's experiences choosing between these for similar requirements, especially regarding operational complexity versus feature set?
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