What is the difference between Kafka and RabbitMQ?

Kafka and RabbitMQ are message queuing systems, but they have different architectural approaches and use cases.

Kafka:

• Distributed event log, focused on high throughput and scalability.
• Messages are stored on disk and can be read multiple times by different consumers.
• Supports publish-subscribe model with the ability to handle large data streams.
• Ideal for analytics systems, stream processing, event sourcing.

RabbitMQ:

• Traditional message broker supporting various exchange models (queues, topics, routing).
• Messages are deleted after delivery acknowledgment (ack), focused on guaranteed delivery.
• Supports complex routing scenarios, priorities, TTL.
• Good for systems requiring reliable delivery and complex routing logic.

In short: Kafka is a distributed log for processing large volumes of data with re-read capability, RabbitMQ is a message broker with flexible routing and delivery guarantees.