When Kafka Is the Wrong Choice
December 2025
Kafka is powerful, but it is not always the right tool.
The Kafka Hype
Kafka has become the default choice for event-driven architectures. It is fast, scalable, and battle-tested. But it is also complex, operationally expensive, and overkill for many use cases.
When Kafka Makes Sense
Kafka is a good choice when:
- You need high throughput (millions of messages per second).
- You need message replay and event sourcing.
- You have multiple consumers reading the same stream.
- You need strong ordering guarantees within partitions.
When Kafka Is Overkill
Kafka is often the wrong choice when:
- You have low message volume (thousands per second).
- You need simple pub/sub without replay.
- You do not have the operational expertise to manage Kafka clusters.
- Your team is small and cannot afford the complexity.
Alternatives
Depending on your use case, consider:
- RabbitMQ: Simpler, easier to operate, good for traditional message queues.
- Redis Streams: Lightweight, fast, good for low-latency use cases.
- AWS SQS/SNS: Managed, serverless, no operational overhead.
- PostgreSQL + LISTEN/NOTIFY: If you already have Postgres, this is often enough.
Conclusion
Kafka is a powerful tool, but it comes with significant complexity. Before reaching for Kafka, ask: Do I really need this? Often, a simpler solution is better.