NATS
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 19 message brokers by recommenders
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.
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.
50 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 34
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 68%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 7.5 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 34 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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
Simple, lightweight and easy to run
“Lightweight is the key for this superb infrastructure technology.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Nats.io lightweight heterogeneous distributed, compositional, federaded learning” “It's really been a great reliable small piece of technology.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool – A Deep Dive into NATS” “simple binary you can run anywhere and it's highly useful!”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Claude Code and Codex Can Have Real-Time Conversation via Git” - Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
- Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
- Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “We turned off Pub/Sub and nobody noticed”
Reliable once running
“one part that always remained up and running without complaining on some dinky machine was NATS”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Chatto is now Open Source” “which it has been great for, including getting subtle scaling details right”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “It's really been a great reliable small piece of technology.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool – A Deep Dive into NATS” - Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “We turned off Pub/Sub and nobody noticed”
Well suited to ephemeral messaging
“NATS is fantastic for ephemeral messaging, but some of this report is really concerning”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “NATS data is ephemeral in many cases anyhow, so it makes a bit more sense here.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “NATS was originally made for simple, fast, ephemeral messaging.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” - Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
Clean request-reply API
“request reply is really useful if you need low latency”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “NATS has a nice API that abstracts that away for you”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Persistence and acknowledged-message loss
“I'm also getting MongoDB vibes from deciding not to flush except once every two minutes.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “The most recent Jepsen analysis again highlights that it's flawed thinking”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “What Does a Database for SSDs Look Like?” “ACKed messages can be silently lost due to minority-node corruption.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” - Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
- Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
- Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
Poor docs and tricky configuration
“NATS is a fantastic piece of software. But doc's unpractical and half backed.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “Though NATS did present a few issues in getting the config right”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Most technical problems are people problems” Doubts about the vendor's conduct
“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.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1” “Given their recentish argument with the CNCF not sure how much I would trust it.”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “We turned off Pub/Sub and nobody noticed” “There are many things they don't seem to understand about their own product.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1”
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 | — | — |
| NATSThis page | 34 | 16 | 68% | 9 | 7.5 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Amazon SQS | 18 | 14 | 56% | 8 | — | — |
| Redpanda | 17 | 4 | 81% | 7 | — | Approved |
| RabbitMQ | 13 | 10 | 57% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 59 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“a rare combination with NATS.io for agent orchestration”
“im generally hesitant to use it in critical systems due to”
“It's been a dream to operate.”
“Given their recentish argument with the CNCF not sure how much I would trust it.”
“such a cool piece of technology that deserves more hype than it gets”
“NATS and its built-in Jetstream stream persistence engine are a miracle.”
“Do note that NATS can easily handle 100x this scale.”
“one part that always remained up and running without complaining on some dinky machine was NATS”
“I am already using a Raspberry Pi, NATS, docker container, etc and am happy with my setup”
“simple binary you can run anywhere and it's highly useful!”
“particularly with micro services in mind”
“It's really been a great reliable small piece of technology.”
“NATS seems like solves the inter-system communication.”
“Lightweight is the key for this superb infrastructure technology.”
“Which is a shame, since I do think it's a great tool.”
“I'm doing pretty much this exact pattern with NATS right now instead of Redis”
“The most recent Jepsen analysis again highlights that it's flawed thinking”
“NATS provides a great fault tolerant messaging infrastructure in building compositional learning applications”
“Core NATS is honestly awesome, low friction middleware.”
“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.”
“ACKed messages can be silently lost due to minority-node corruption.”
“There are many things they don't seem to understand about their own product.”
“the choices it makes for persistence are really surprising”
“NATS is fantastic for ephemeral messaging, but some of this report is really concerning”
“I'm also getting MongoDB vibes from deciding not to flush except once every two minutes.”
“which it has been great for, including getting subtle scaling details right”
“I'd be pretty sceptical about persistence”
“NATS is ephemeral. if you can accept that, then you'll be fine.”
“NATS has a nice API that abstracts that away for you”
“request reply is really useful if you need low latency”
“it performed well and was easy to administer”
“NATS was originally made for simple, fast, ephemeral messaging.”
“NATS data is ephemeral in many cases anyhow, so it makes a bit more sense here.”
“I wouldn't trust a product that doesn't default to safest options.”
“NATS is a terrible message bus system, but all the others are worse”
“NATS is a fantastic piece of software. But doc's unpractical and half backed.”
“Then use another known and tested messaging system.”
“Not a drop in replacement, but worth looking at.”
“Though NATS did present a few issues in getting the config right”
“should be similar to this NATS example”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.