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Apache Pulsar

108
195
+ 1
24
NATS

363
480
+ 1
60
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Apache Pulsar vs NATS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache Pulsar and NATS are both messaging systems used for building distributed and scalable applications. However, there are several key differences between Apache Pulsar and NATS that developers should consider when choosing a messaging system for their projects.

  1. Architecture: Apache Pulsar is built on a modern, cloud-native architecture that provides high scalability and fault-tolerance. It uses a hierarchical topic structure and a distributed log-based storage system. On the other hand, NATS follows a simple, lightweight design philosophy. It uses a publish-subscribe model and guarantees at-most-once delivery semantics.

  2. Ecosystem: Apache Pulsar has a rich and growing ecosystem with support for multiple programming languages, including Java, Python, and Go. It also provides connectors for integration with other systems like Apache Kafka and AWS S3. NATS, on the other hand, offers a more streamlined ecosystem focused on simplicity and performance. It has good support for popular programming languages but may have limited integration options.

  3. Persistence: Apache Pulsar provides built-in message persistence, which means messages are stored on disk and can be replayed later. It supports both durable and non-durable subscriptions, allowing consumers to catch up on missed messages. NATS, on the other hand, does not provide built-in persistence. Messages are stored in memory and are not persisted to disk, making it more suitable for scenarios where high throughput and low latency are more important than message durability.

  4. Multi-tenancy: Apache Pulsar supports multi-tenancy, which means it can be used by multiple independent tenants or organizations within a single deployment. It provides fine-grained access control and resource isolation between tenants. NATS, on the other hand, is not designed with native multi-tenancy support, making it more suitable for scenarios where a single organization or application is using the messaging system.

  5. Delivery Guarantees: Apache Pulsar provides strong delivery guarantees, including exactly-once semantics for message processing. It achieves this by using a log-based storage system and maintaining message offsets. NATS, on the other hand, focuses on low latency and at-most-once delivery semantics. While NATS provides high performance, it may not be suitable for use cases that require strict ordering and message reliability.

  6. Deployment Flexibility: Apache Pulsar can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. It supports multiple deployment modes, including standalone, local cluster, and globally distributed deployments. NATS, on the other hand, is typically deployed as a lightweight server or cluster and may not have the same level of deployment flexibility as Apache Pulsar.

In Summary, Apache Pulsar and NATS differ in their architecture, ecosystem, persistence, multi-tenancy support, delivery guarantees, and deployment flexibility. Developers should carefully consider these differences when choosing a messaging system for their specific use case.

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Pros of Apache Pulsar
Pros of NATS
  • 7
    Simple
  • 4
    Scalable
  • 3
    High-throughput
  • 2
    Geo-replication
  • 2
    Multi-tenancy
  • 1
    Pulsar Functions
  • 1
    Secure
  • 1
    Stream SQL
  • 1
    Horizontally scaleable
  • 1
    Easy to deploy
  • 1
    Fast
  • 22
    Fastest pub-sub system out there
  • 16
    Rock solid
  • 12
    Easy to grasp
  • 4
    Light-weight
  • 4
    Easy, Fast, Secure
  • 2
    Robust Security Model

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Cons of Apache Pulsar
Cons of NATS
  • 1
    Very few commercial vendors for support
  • 1
    LImited Language support(6)
  • 1
    No one and only one delivery
  • 1
    No guaranteed dliefvery
  • 1
    Not jms compliant
  • 1
    Only Supports Topics
  • 2
    Persistence with Jetstream supported
  • 1
    No Order
  • 1
    No Persistence

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What is Apache Pulsar?

Apache Pulsar is a distributed messaging solution developed and released to open source at Yahoo. Pulsar supports both pub-sub messaging and queuing in a platform designed for performance, scalability, and ease of development and operation.

What is NATS?

Unlike traditional enterprise messaging systems, NATS has an always-on dial tone that does whatever it takes to remain available. This forms a great base for building modern, reliable, and scalable cloud and distributed systems.

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What companies use Apache Pulsar?
What companies use NATS?
See which teams inside your own company are using Apache Pulsar or NATS.
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What tools integrate with Apache Pulsar?
What tools integrate with NATS?

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Amazon S3KafkaZookeeper+5
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What are some alternatives to Apache Pulsar and NATS?
Kafka
Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ gives your applications a common platform to send and receive messages, and your messages a safe place to live until received.
Amazon SQS
Transmit any volume of data, at any level of throughput, without losing messages or requiring other services to be always available. With SQS, you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available messaging cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.
Celery
Celery is an asynchronous task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It is focused on real-time operation, but supports scheduling as well.
ActiveMQ
Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License.
See all alternatives