What's the fundamental difference between Service Bus and Kafka?

Service Bus is a message broker — messages are consumed and removed. Kafka is an append-only log — messages persist and can be replayed by any number of consumers reading at their own offset. They solve different problems even though both move data between services.

Should you pick Kafka just because a queue seems too simple?

No — taking on Kafka is really a decision to take on its operational overhead (partitions, cluster management, rebalancing), and that's only worth it for its ecosystem or replay guarantees. Azure Event Hubs' Kafka-compatible endpoint is often the cheaper way to get Kafka's protocol without running a cluster.

Azure

Somebody said “we need Kafka”.

A broker and a log are not two brands of the same thing.

What you'll learn

The real difference between a broker and an append-only log
Why Kafka partitions put a ceiling on your consumer count
When the Event Hubs Kafka endpoint is the cheaper answer

Azure 10 steps 32 seconds June 30, 2026 —

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