When to choose Redpanda instead of Apache Kafka?

Data streaming emerged as a new software category. It complements traditional middleware, data warehouse, and data lakes. Apache Kafka became the de facto standard. New players enter the market because of Kafka’s success. One of those is Redpanda, a lightweight Kafka-compatible C++ implementation. This blog post explores the differences between Apache Kafka and Redpanda, when to choose which framework, and how the Kafka ecosystem, licensing, and community adoption impact a proper evaluation.

(Originally posted on Kai Waehner’s blog: “When to choose Redpanda instead of Apache Kafka?”… Join the data streaming community and stay informed about new blog posts by subscribing to my newsletter)

Data streaming: A new software category

Data-driven applications are the new black. As part of this, data streaming is a new software category. If you don’t understand yet how it differs from other data management platforms like a data warehouse or data lake, check out the following blog series:

1. Data Warehouse vs. Data Lake vs. Data Streaming — Friends, Enemies, Frenemies?
2. Data Streaming for Data Ingestion into the Data Warehouse and Data Lake
3. Data Warehouse Modernization: From Legacy On-Premise to Cloud-Native Infrastructure