Is Kafka a Message Queue or a Message Broker? [closed]

Question

After going through a couple of articles explaining the difference between Message Queues and Message Brokers, I'm quite confused as to whether Kafka is a Message Queue or a Message Broker.

The main difference that I know is that Message Queue offer two types of models:

1. Point to Point Messaging
2. Publisher-Subscriber Model

whereas Message Brokers offer only the Publisher-Subscriber model.

In the case of Kafka, my understanding is that it offers Publisher-Subscriber Model.

Hence, I'm quite confused. Can someone please help me here ??

Answer 1

Kafka can replace Message Queues (MQ), such as RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ for some implementations, but it is definitely not MQ. So this one is off the table.

A message queue consists of two components: a message broker and a client. The message broker is responsible for receiving and storing messages in a queue, and the client is responsible for sending and receiving messages from the broker.

from a Medium article here

Therefore, calling Kafka a Message Broker will also be confusing and probably inaccurate.

What may be causing this confusion, is the fact that the main server type in a Kafka Cluster is called a Broker, but as stated it does not define Kafka and should not be used as a synonym for its name. Most sources that I have read refer to Kafka as a Distributed Event Streaming Platform.

On a personal note, Kafka for me is a category of its own, so should only be called Kafka.. Hope I answered your question.

Some additional sources to look into

1. Kafka Intro from Apache site
2. Kafka Docs from Apache site
3. Difference between Kafka and RabbitMQ from Simplilearn