NATS vs RabbitMQ

Overview

RabbitMQ

Stacks21.8K

Followers18.9K

Votes558

GitHub Stars13.2K

Forks4.0K

NATS

Stacks394

Followers498

Votes60

NATS vs RabbitMQ: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between NATS and RabbitMQ. Both NATS and RabbitMQ are messaging systems used for interprocess communication in distributed systems. However, there are some significant differences between the two.

Scalability: NATS is known for its high scalability and low latency. It is designed to handle a large number of subscribers and messages efficiently. NATS can scale horizontally by adding more servers to handle the increased load. On the other hand, RabbitMQ's scalability is limited by its design. It relies on a centralized broker, which can become a bottleneck when dealing with a high volume of messages.
Message Delivery Guarantees: NATS follows a "at most once" delivery guarantee, which means that a message may be delivered zero or more times, but never more than once. This approach allows for high-performance messaging but sacrifices the reliability of message delivery. In contrast, RabbitMQ provides different message delivery guarantees, such as "at least once" and "exactly once," by implementing acknowledgments and persistent storage. This makes RabbitMQ suitable for applications requiring guaranteed message delivery.
Protocol Support: NATS uses its own lightweight publish-subscribe protocol, which is simple and efficient. It is designed to minimize protocol overhead and maximize performance. RabbitMQ, on the other hand, supports multiple protocols, including AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) and MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). This makes RabbitMQ more versatile and suitable for integration with different systems.
Ease of Use: NATS is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It has a small footprint and minimal configuration requirements, making it easy to deploy and manage. RabbitMQ, on the other hand, has more features and configuration options, which can make it more complex to set up and maintain. However, RabbitMQ's feature-richness allows for more advanced messaging scenarios, such as routing, message transformation, and message persistence.
Community and Ecosystem: RabbitMQ has a larger and more mature community compared to NATS. This means that there are more resources, tutorials, and community support available for RabbitMQ. RabbitMQ also has a wide range of plugins and integrations available, which further expands its ecosystem. NATS, while it has a growing community, may have fewer resources and integrations available compared to RabbitMQ.
Language Support: NATS provides official client libraries for multiple programming languages, including Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python. This allows developers to use NATS with their preferred programming language. RabbitMQ also has support for multiple programming languages through client libraries and protocols like AMQP. However, NATS may have better performance and more optimized client libraries for certain languages.

In Summary, NATS and RabbitMQ differ in terms of scalability, message delivery guarantees, protocol support, ease of use, community and ecosystem, and language support. These differences make them suitable for different use cases and environments.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on RabbitMQ, NATS

viradiya

Apr 12, 2020

Needs adviceon

AngularJS

ASP.NET Core

MSSQL

We are going to develop a microservices-based application. It consists of AngularJS, ASP.NET Core, and MSSQL.

We have 3 types of microservices. Emailservice, Filemanagementservice, Filevalidationservice

I am a beginner in microservices. But I have read about RabbitMQ, but come to know that there are Redis and Kafka also in the market. So, I want to know which is best.

933k views933k

Comments

André

Technology Manager at GS1 Portugal - Codipor

Jul 30, 2020

Needs adviceon

.NET Core

Hello dear developers, our company is starting a new project for a new Web App, and we are currently designing the Architecture (we will be using .NET Core). We want to embark on something new, so we are thinking about migrating from a monolithic perspective to a microservices perspective. We wish to containerize those microservices and make them independent from each other. Is it the best way for microservices to communicate with each other via ESB, or is there a new way of doing this? Maybe complementing with an API Gateway? Can you recommend something else different than the two tools I provided?

We want something good for Cost/Benefit; performance should be high too (but not the primary constraint).

Thank you very much in advance :)

461k views461k

Comments

mediafinger

Feb 13, 2019

Reviewon

Kafka

RabbitMQ

The question for which Message Queue to use mentioned "availability, distributed, scalability, and monitoring". I don't think that this excludes many options already. I does not sound like you would take advantage of Kafka's strengths (replayability, based on an even sourcing architecture). You could pick one of the AMQP options.

I would recommend the RabbitMQ message broker, which not only implements the AMQP standard 0.9.1 (it can support 1.x or other protocols as well) but has also several very useful extensions built in. It ticks the boxes you mentioned and on top you will get a very flexible system, that allows you to build the architecture, pick the options and trade-offs that suite your case best.

For more information about RabbitMQ, please have a look at the linked markdown I assembled. The second half explains many configuration options. It also contains links to managed hosting and to libraries (though it is missing Python's - which should be Puka, I assume).

159k views159k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

RabbitMQ	NATS
RabbitMQ gives your applications a common platform to send and receive messages, and your messages a safe place to live until received.	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.
Robust messaging for applications;Easy to use;Runs on all major operating systems;Supports a huge number of developer platforms;Open source and commercially supported	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 13.2K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 4.0K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 21.8K	Stacks 394
Followers 18.9K	Followers 498
Votes 558	Votes 60
Pros & Cons
Pros 235 It's fast and it works with good metrics/monitoring 80 Ease of configuration 60 I like the admin interface 52 Easy to set-up and start with 22 Durable Cons 9 Too complicated cluster/HA config and management 6 Needs Erlang runtime. Need ops good with Erlang runtime 5 Configuration must be done first, not by your code 4 Slow	Pros 22 Fastest pub-sub system out there 16 Rock solid 12 Easy to grasp 4 Easy, Fast, Secure 4 Light-weight Cons 2 Persistence with Jetstream supported 1 No Order 1 No Persistence

What are some alternatives to RabbitMQ, NATS?

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

Socket.IO

It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

Kafka

Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.

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.

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

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.

NSQ

NSQ is a realtime distributed messaging platform designed to operate at scale, handling billions of messages per day. It promotes distributed and decentralized topologies without single points of failure, enabling fault tolerance and high availability coupled with a reliable message delivery guarantee. See features & guarantees.

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Ably

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.

Related Comparisons

NATS vs RabbitMQ: What are the differences?

Introduction

Scalability: NATS is known for its high scalability and low latency. It is designed to handle a large number of subscribers and messages efficiently. NATS can scale horizontally by adding more servers to handle the increased load. On the other hand, RabbitMQ's scalability is limited by its design. It relies on a centralized broker, which can become a bottleneck when dealing with a high volume of messages.
Message Delivery Guarantees: NATS follows a "at most once" delivery guarantee, which means that a message may be delivered zero or more times, but never more than once. This approach allows for high-performance messaging but sacrifices the reliability of message delivery. In contrast, RabbitMQ provides different message delivery guarantees, such as "at least once" and "exactly once," by implementing acknowledgments and persistent storage. This makes RabbitMQ suitable for applications requiring guaranteed message delivery.
Protocol Support: NATS uses its own lightweight publish-subscribe protocol, which is simple and efficient. It is designed to minimize protocol overhead and maximize performance. RabbitMQ, on the other hand, supports multiple protocols, including AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) and MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). This makes RabbitMQ more versatile and suitable for integration with different systems.
Ease of Use: NATS is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It has a small footprint and minimal configuration requirements, making it easy to deploy and manage. RabbitMQ, on the other hand, has more features and configuration options, which can make it more complex to set up and maintain. However, RabbitMQ's feature-richness allows for more advanced messaging scenarios, such as routing, message transformation, and message persistence.
Community and Ecosystem: RabbitMQ has a larger and more mature community compared to NATS. This means that there are more resources, tutorials, and community support available for RabbitMQ. RabbitMQ also has a wide range of plugins and integrations available, which further expands its ecosystem. NATS, while it has a growing community, may have fewer resources and integrations available compared to RabbitMQ.
Language Support: NATS provides official client libraries for multiple programming languages, including Go, Java, JavaScript, and Python. This allows developers to use NATS with their preferred programming language. RabbitMQ also has support for multiple programming languages through client libraries and protocols like AMQP. However, NATS may have better performance and more optimized client libraries for certain languages.

NATS vs RabbitMQ

Overview

NATS vs RabbitMQ: What are the differences?