Redpanda Has a Free Kafka Alternative Written in C Plus Plus for Low Latency

Redpanda is Kafka API compatible but written in C++. No JVM, no ZooKeeper, 10x lower tail latency.

Features

• Kafka API — drop-in replacement
• C++ — no JVM overhead
• Built-in Raft — no ZooKeeper
• Schema registry and Console UI
• Tiered storage — offload to S3

Quick Start

docker run -p 9092:9092 redpandadata/redpanda

Use any Kafka client library — no changes needed.

vs Kafka

Feature	Redpanda	Kafka
Language	C++	Java
ZooKeeper	Not needed	KRaft
p99 latency	<10ms	~50ms

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Need streaming? GitHub or [e-mail]