Integration / RabbitMQ Interview Questions
How does RabbitMQ differ from Kafka?
RabbitMQ and Kafka solve overlapping problems but with fundamentally different internal models, which shows up clearly once you compare them side by side.
| RabbitMQ | Kafka |
| Smart broker: exchange evaluates routing rules and pushes to queues. | Dumb broker, smart consumer: append-only log per partition; consumers track their own offset. |
| Messages are typically removed once consumed and acknowledged. | Messages are retained for a configured period regardless of consumption. |
| Best for complex routing, RPC, and task queues with per-message semantics. | Best for high-throughput event streaming and replay-able logs. |
| Ordering guaranteed only within a single queue delivered to a single consumer. | Ordering guaranteed within a partition. |
In short, reach for RabbitMQ when you need flexible routing and traditional queueing semantics, and reach for Kafka when you need durable, replayable, high-throughput event streams.
Kafka's consumer model is often described as:
Which system typically retains messages for a set period regardless of whether they were consumed?
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