Walrus
Shares rank 16 of 19 message brokers by recommenders
Recommended as a high-performance, easier-to-run distributed message streaming engine written in Rust that combines log storage with Raft coordination. Critics question missing failure recovery and latency benchmarks.
Recommended as a high-performance, easier-to-run distributed message streaming engine written in Rust that combines log storage with Raft coordination. Critics question missing failure recovery and latency benchmarks.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not 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: not 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 2 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
Combines fast log storage with Raft
“combines high-performance log storage with Raft-based coordination”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Walrus – high performance distributed message streaming engine (Rust)” Easier to run than alternatives
“Walrus is a lot easier to run”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Walrus – a Kafka alternative written in Rust” Handles fluid-like physics simulations
“it feels like a big stepping stone because it is able to handle anything that is vaguely fluid like”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Paper shows scientific foundation model learns general abstract physics”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No recovery of redundancy after failure
“I see no mention of recovering redundancy of stored data after a node failure.”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Walrus – a Kafka alternative written in Rust” No p99 latency in benchmarks
“I don't see any mentions of p99 latency in the benchmark results.”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Walrus – a Kafka alternative written in Rust” Unclear value beyond being Rust
“What value does this provide other than being written in Rust?”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Walrus – a Kafka alternative written in Rust”
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 |
| WalrusThis page | 5 | 3 | 63% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I see no mention of recovering redundancy of stored data after a node failure.”
“What value does this provide other than being written in Rust?”
“Walrus is a lot easier to run”
“I don't see any mentions of p99 latency in the benchmark results.”
“it feels like a big stepping stone because it is able to handle anything that is vaguely fluid like”
“combines high-performance log storage with Raft-based coordination”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.