# Apache Pulsar

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Apache Pulsar and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free open-source messaging system that supports the Kafka protocol and adds features like per-message acknowledgement. One critic notes it costs more in compute and operations than NATS.

## Why people recommend it

- Works with Kafka protocol clients (1 comments): "Pulsar supports the kafka protocol, so anything that works with Kafka should just work with Pulsar." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203369))
- Per-message acknowledgement that Kafka lacks (1 comments): "Pulsar has a lot of features that Kafka doesn't have, like per-message acknowledgement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203417))
- Performance and reliability improvements (1 comments): "major performance and reliability improvements for the topics and applications you already run" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49992078))

## What people warn about

- Higher compute and operations cost (1 comments): "Pulsar can do most of what NATS can, but at a much higher cost in both compute and operations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198569))
- Managed Pulsar services seen as risky (1 comments): "building on top of these specialized managed service providers is becoming increasingly risky" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46194284))
- Shares Kafka's Achilles' heel (1 comments): "This is the Achilles' heel of Kafka (and Pulsar)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45788163))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apache Kafka](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-kafka.md): 53 recommend
- [NATS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nats.md): 34 recommend
- [Redpanda](https://hackerapproved.com/p/redpanda.md): 17 recommend
- [RabbitMQ](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rabbitmq.md): 13 recommend
- [PostgreSQL LISTEN/NOTIFY](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postgresql-listen-notify.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Apache Pulsar", https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-pulsar/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).