# NATS

34 Hacker News commenters recommended NATS and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 7.5 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a lightweight, low-latency messaging system that runs quietly for years. The most common caveat is its persistence and durability choices, which critics question.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, lightweight and easy to run (6 comments): "Lightweight is the key for this superb infrastructure technology." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46764988)) "It's really been a great reliable small piece of technology." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663826)) "simple binary you can run anywhere and it's highly useful!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48346063))
- Reliable once running (4 comments): "one part that always remained up and running without complaining on some dinky machine was NATS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48839464)) "which it has been great for, including getting subtle scaling details right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198050)) "It's really been a great reliable small piece of technology." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663826))
- Well suited to ephemeral messaging (4 comments): "NATS is fantastic for ephemeral messaging, but some of this report is really concerning" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198569)) "NATS data is ephemeral in many cases anyhow, so it makes a bit more sense here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197311)) "NATS was originally made for simple, fast, ephemeral messaging." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197421))
- Clean request-reply API (2 comments): "request reply is really useful if you need low latency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197746)) "NATS has a nice API that abstracts that away for you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197800))

## What people warn about

- Persistence and acknowledged-message loss (6 comments): "I'm also getting MongoDB vibes from deciding not to flush except once every two minutes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198231)) "The most recent Jepsen analysis again highlights that it's flawed thinking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335920)) "ACKed messages can be silently lost due to minority-node corruption." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203890))
- Poor docs and tricky configuration (2 comments): "NATS is a fantastic piece of software. But doc's unpractical and half backed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196649)) "Though NATS did present a few issues in getting the config right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164919))
- Doubts about the vendor's conduct (3 comments): "One or two of the comments on GitHub by the NATS team in response to Issues opened by Kyle are also more than a bit cringeworthy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46204319)) "Given their recentish argument with the CNCF not sure how much I would trust it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49285579)) "There are many things they don't seem to understand about their own product." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202639))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apache Kafka](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-kafka.md): 53 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
- [S2](https://hackerapproved.com/p/s2-lite.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "NATS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nats/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).