Apache Pulsar
Shares rank 16 of 19 message brokers by recommenders
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.
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.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works with Kafka protocol clients
“Pulsar supports the kafka protocol, so anything that works with Kafka should just work with Pulsar.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” Per-message acknowledgement that Kafka lacks
“Pulsar has a lot of features that Kafka doesn't have, like per-message acknowledgement”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” Performance and reliability improvements
“major performance and reliability improvements for the topics and applications you already run”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Apache Pulsar 5.0 Released with Scalable Topics”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Higher compute and operations cost
“Pulsar can do most of what NATS can, but at a much higher cost in both compute and operations”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” Managed Pulsar services seen as risky
“building on top of these specialized managed service providers is becoming increasingly risky”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” Shares Kafka's Achilles' heel
“This is the Achilles' heel of Kafka (and Pulsar)”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 on Hacker News
Other message brokers people recommend
The four most recommended other message brokers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Kafka | 53 | 55 | 49% | 12 | — | — |
| NATS | 34 | 16 | 68% | 9 | 7.5 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Amazon SQS | 18 | 14 | 56% | 8 | — | — |
| Redpanda | 17 | 4 | 81% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Apache PulsarThis page | 5 | 3 | 63% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“major performance and reliability improvements for the topics and applications you already run”
“I wish that Pulsar was as well instead of Kafka.”
“Pulsar has a lot of features that Kafka doesn't have, like per-message acknowledgement”
“Pulsar supports the kafka protocol, so anything that works with Kafka should just work with Pulsar.”
“Pulsar can do most of what NATS can, but at a much higher cost in both compute and operations”
“building on top of these specialized managed service providers is becoming increasingly risky”
“This is the Achilles' heel of Kafka (and Pulsar)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.