Message Broker vs Streaming Platforms

Whereas message brokers can support two or more messaging patterns, including message queues and pub/sub, event streaming platforms only offer pub/sub-style distribution patterns. These event streaming platforms (like Kafka) are designed for use with high volumes of messages, and they are readily scalable. Additionally, they’re capable of positioning streams of records into categories (called topics) and storing them for a predetermined amount of time.

However, there is a trade-off, because, unlike message brokers event streaming platforms cannot guarantee message delivery or track which consumers have received messages.

Event streaming platforms offer more scalability than message brokers but fewer features that ensure fault tolerance (like message resending), as well as more limited message routing and queueing capabilities.