Aiven for Apache Kafka
Managed Kafka with tiered storage and built-in schema registry.
Apache Pulsar
Scalable, low‑latency pub‑sub platform for real‑time data streams
Apache Pulsar delivers horizontally scalable, low‑latency messaging with strong ordering, multi‑tenant security, geo‑replication, and a rich set of language clients for modern event‑driven architectures.
Overview
Overview
Apache Pulsar is a distributed publish‑subscribe messaging system designed for high‑throughput, low‑latency workloads. It offers strong ordering guarantees, durable storage, and transparent handling of partitioned topics, making it suitable for real‑time analytics, event streaming, and micro‑service communication.
Deployment & Ecosystem
Pulsar can be run as a standalone service or deployed at scale using Helm charts and Docker images. It supports multi‑tenant isolation, authentication, authorization, and quota management out of the box. The platform includes a REST API for administration, geo‑replication across data centers, and a growing ecosystem of language clients (Java, Go, Python, .NET, C++, Node.js) and management tools such as Pulsar Manager.
Who Benefits
Developers building event‑driven architectures, SaaS providers needing tenant isolation, and organizations requiring global data distribution will find Pulsar’s flexible model and operational tooling a strong fit.
Highlights
Horizontal scalability to millions of topics and messages per second
Strong ordering and consistency guarantees
Multi‑tenant security with authentication, authorization, and quotas
Built‑in geo‑replication for global data distribution
Pros
- Handles massive throughput with low latency
- Durable storage with transparent batching
- Rich client library support across major languages
- Designed for hosted, multi‑tenant deployments
Considerations
- Requires specific Java versions (8, 11, or 17) depending on release
- Operational complexity can be high for large clusters
- Learning curve for advanced features like geo‑replication
- Some language clients (e.g., Ruby) are archived
Managed products teams compare with
When teams consider Apache Pulsar, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Fit guide
Great for
- Real‑time analytics pipelines needing high throughput
- Multi‑tenant SaaS platforms requiring isolation and security
- Globally distributed applications with cross‑region replication
- Event‑driven micro‑service architectures
Not ideal when
- Simple single‑node queue use cases
- Teams without Java or container orchestration expertise
- Low‑volume workloads where a lightweight broker suffices
- Projects that need only a single language client with full support
How teams use it
Streaming telemetry from IoT devices
Collects millions of sensor events per second, stores them durably, and forwards to analytics pipelines with guaranteed ordering.
Multi‑tenant SaaS event bus
Provides isolated topics per tenant, enforces quotas, and secures access via authentication and authorization.
Cross‑region data replication
Synchronizes topic data between data centers, ensuring low‑latency access for users worldwide.
Micro‑service communication backbone
Enables decoupled services to publish and consume events with low latency and strong consistency.
Tech snapshot
Java99%
Shell1%
Python1%
Go1%
Dockerfile1%
HCL1%
Frequently asked questions
What Java version is required to run Pulsar?
Pulsar 2.8+ recommends JDK 11, while the latest master branch requires JDK 17. Older versions support JDK 8.
Can Pulsar be deployed on Kubernetes?
Yes, Pulsar provides Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments, including options for custom Docker images.
Is there a REST API for administration?
Pulsar includes a REST API for provisioning, admin tasks, and retrieving metrics.
Which language clients are actively maintained?
Java, Go, Python, .NET/C#, C++, and Node.js clients are actively maintained; the Ruby client is archived.
How does Pulsar ensure message durability?
Messages are written to durable storage with configurable replication and can be batched transparently for efficiency.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 15,061
- Watchers
- 15,061
- Forks
- 3,698
LicenseApache-2.0
Repo age9 years old
Last commit12 hours ago
Primary languageJava
Last synced 11 hours ago