Apache Pulsar vs Apache RocketMQ
Apache Pulsar
pulsar.apache.orgApache RocketMQ
rocketmq.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Apache Pulsar | Apache RocketMQ |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Event Streaming Platforms | 8.1 (#7) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Spec score · Distributed Systems | 8.1 (#12) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Spec score · Message Queue (MQ) Software | 8.1 (#12) | 8.8 (#4) |
| Deployment | Pulsar can run in Docker or Kubernetes, and the project offers a Helm chart for Kubernetes deployment. | RocketMQ 5.x separates stateless Proxy from storage and compute so those layers can scale independently. |
| Security controls | Pulsar provides encryption, pluggable authentication, and authorization controls, but these are not enabled by default. | Official security documentation describes ACL authentication and authorization plus TLS-encrypted client-server communication. |
| What it does | Apache Pulsar is an open-source, distributed messaging and streaming platform built for the cloud. | Apache RocketMQ is a distributed messaging and streaming platform designed for low latency, high throughput, reliability and very large scale. |
Plans
Apache RocketMQ
- Apache RocketMQFree
- Apache RocketMQ open-source distributionFree
In their own words
Apache Pulsar
Apache Pulsar is a free, open-source distributed messaging and streaming platform built for cloud use. It supports message consumption with less than 10 ms latency and up to one million unique topics in a cluster. Configurable replication across geographic regions and automatic client failover to healthy clusters support multi-region deployments. Tenants and policies control access to data and actions, and can isolate brokers to limit noisy-neighbor effects. Maintained client libraries are available for Java, Go, Python, C++, Node.js, and C#. Built-in connectors move data to and from systems including Kafka, RabbitMQ, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. Pulsar Functions process messages with user-defined logic in Java, Python, or Go. Tiered storage can offload data from BookKeeper to blob storage such as S3 for unlimited retention. It can run in Docker or Kubernetes, with a Helm chart for Kubernetes. Encryption, authentication, and authorization are available but are not enabled by default. The 5.0.0-M2 milestone is for early testing and feedback, not production use.
Apache RocketMQ
Apache RocketMQ is distributed middleware for asynchronous communication and publish/subscribe messaging. Its asynchronous model can separate systems and shift loads between upstream and downstream services. Messaging options include publish/subscribe, request/reply, streaming, transactional messages, FIFO ordering, filtering, and push or pull consumption. The project lists durable persistence, replication, failover, fault tolerance, high-availability options, and cross-region disaster recovery. Its site describes million-level LiteTopics per cluster and says RocketMQ has demonstrated 10M+ TPS throughput. It can run locally, in Docker, or Kubernetes, with source and binary packages available. The ecosystem includes EventBridge, MQTT, RocketMQ Connect, RocketMQ Streams, Spring, Flink, Prometheus Exporter, and a Kubernetes Operator; AI options include native MCP support, A2A compatibility, and integrations with LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, AgentScope, Dify, and Coze. The project lists gRPC SDKs for Java, Go, Python, C++, and Rust, plus gRPC, MQTT, JMS, and OpenMessaging protocols. It is free under Apache License 2.0. ACL is not enabled by default.