Apache Pulsar vs Apache Kafka - How to Choose a Data Streaming Platform

Apache Kafka and Apache Pulsar are two prominent open-source data streaming platforms developed under the Apache Software Foundation, each with distinct architectural designs and operational features. Apache Kafka is widely recognized for its simplicity and high throughput, utilizing a pull-based message consumption model and a straightforward architecture that is becoming even simpler with the phasing out of ZooKeeper. It is favored for its robust stream processing capabilities through Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, making it suitable for complex streaming applications. On the other hand, Apache Pulsar, initially developed at Yahoo!, is acknowledged for its cloud-native, multi-tenant architecture that separates brokers from the storage layer using Apache BookKeeper, offering advantages like tiered storage and stateless brokers that enhance scalability and low latency. Despite Kafka's larger community and extensive support resources, Pulsar provides direct interaction opportunities within its smaller community and comprehensive documentation. The choice between the two often hinges on specific use cases, where Kafka is preferred for high throughput and Pulsar for low latency, although both platforms are capable of meeting diverse data streaming needs.