Redpanda
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 19 message brokers by recommenders
Kafka-compatible streaming platform that people find easier to run, quick to start, and lighter on resources than Kafka.
Kafka-compatible streaming platform that people find easier to run, quick to start, and lighter on resources than Kafka.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 81%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Kafka-compatible and easier to run
“I hope that things like RedPanda will turn out to be easier to run for this use case than actual Kafka.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “I can't recommend Grafana anymore” “It is super easy to setup in docker, starts really fast and consumes less resources than Java version.”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “Small Kafka: Tansu and SQLite on a free t3.micro” “superior wire-compatible alternative to Kafka for years”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” - Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent”
Good performance, cost and features
“I've been pretty happy with RP performance/cost/functionality wise.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” “RedPanda works and the pricing allows actually using the service”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” Works well for CDC pipelines
“CDC capture Kafka (Redpanda) these days - just works and simplifies a bunch of stuff.”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool – A Deep Dive into NATS” “IMO for those requirements Redpanda has been the go-to for the last 5 years or so”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Walrus – a Kafka alternative written in Rust” Seen as technically superior to Kafka
“Redpanda has surpassed them from a technical quality perspective”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” “Using RP was like a breath of fresh air”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” “RedPanda was a huge win for us.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent”
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 | — | — |
| RedpandaThis page | 17 | 4 | 81% | 7 | — | Approved |
| RabbitMQ | 13 | 10 | 57% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“You can use redpanda with interrupts just fine (no fan noise).”
“Redpanda was eating too much RAM - 2GB min which is absurd for our use case.”
“CDC capture Kafka (Redpanda) these days - just works and simplifies a bunch of stuff.”
“includes kitty terminal graphics protocol support so I can cat nyan.png and get nyancat rendered in the terminal”
“It is super easy to setup in docker, starts really fast and consumes less resources than Java version.”
“scylla and red-panda are both source available, and VC funded”
“aren't they struggling for the same reasons: not the default, faster horse, costly to maintain”
“they would not offer us anything below $100k per year for enterprise support”
“Redpanda seems like a great re-implementation of Kafka.”
“RedPanda works and the pricing allows actually using the service”
“Using RP was like a breath of fresh air”
“RedPanda was a huge win for us.”
“Redpanda has surpassed them from a technical quality perspective”
“I've been pretty happy with RP performance/cost/functionality wise.”
“superior wire-compatible alternative to Kafka for years”
“Maybe a good time to consider alternatives”
“IMO for those requirements Redpanda has been the go-to for the last 5 years or so”
“I hope that things like RedPanda will turn out to be easier to run for this use case than actual Kafka.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.