Kafka Compatibility

Redpanda is compatible with Apache Kafka versions 0.11 and later, with specific exceptions noted on this page.

Kafka client compatibility

Clients developed for Kafka versions 0.11 or later are compatible with Redpanda. Modern clients auto-negotiate protocol versions or use an earlier protocol version accepted by Redpanda brokers.

Redpanda Data recommends always using the latest supported version of a client.

The following clients have been validated with Redpanda.

Language Client

Java

Apache Kafka Java Client

C/C++

librdkafka

Go

franz-go

Python

kafka-python-ng

Node.js

KafkaJS

Rust

kafka-rust

Clients that have not been validated by Redpanda Data, but use the Kafka protocol, remain compatible with Redpanda subject to the limitations below (particularly those based on librdkafka, such as confluent-kafka-dotnet or confluent-python).

If you find a client that is not supported, reach out to the Redpanda team in the community Slack.

Unsupported Kafka features

Redpanda does not currently support the following Apache Kafka features:

  • Managing SASL users with Kafka APIs: DescribeUserSCRAMCredentialsRequest and AlterUserSCRAMCredentialsRequest APIs.

  • HTTP Proxy (pandaproxy): Unlike other REST proxy implementations in the Kafka ecosystem, Redpanda HTTP Proxy does not support topic and ACLs CRUD through the HTTP Proxy. HTTP Proxy is designed for clients producing and consuming data that do not perform administrative functions.

  • The delete.retention.ms topic configuration in Kafka is not supported. Tombstone markers are not removed for topics with a compact cleanup policy. Redpanda only deletes tombstone markers when topics with a cleanup policy of compact,delete have reached their retention limits.

If you have any issues while working with a Kafka tool, you can file an issue.