Open source message queues and streaming, tested

Message queues and stream processors you can run yourself. The list is ordered by whether each project came up when Argusic installed it fresh, with the recording of that attempt one click away.

Tested between and . Each row shows its own test date; a project can change after that day.

18 of 21 tested projects run. 26 more waiting for a test.

In short: 14 of the 21 tested projects started as-is on a fresh machine: nsq, vector, nats-server, watermill, risingwave, kombu, go-streams, and riko, and 6 more. 4 more started once a stand-in replaced a service they expect, such as a database: flink-learning, liftbridge, svix-webhooks, and enqueue-dev. 3 could not be verified: robustmq, fluvio, and siddhi; the log shows where each one stopped.

Measured by Argusic on a fresh machine every time. Every number links to its evidence.

#projectverdictArgusic Scorelanguagestarstested on
1nsqRuns100 / 100Go25,770

A realtime distributed messaging platform

What the test found: NSQ v1.3.0 builds on Go 1.26.8, all 11 test packages pass (0 failures), and nsqlookupd+nsqd boot, accept HTTP publishes, and deliver messages end-to-end. 6 minutes.

2vectorRuns100 / 100Rust22,679

A high-performance observability data pipeline.

What the test found: The project compiles, the binary runs and processes real data end-to-end: demo_logs source reads events, console and blackhole sinks receive them, and 499 unit tests pass in 26 seconds. 3 pre-existing tests fail due to a missing external secrets-exec binary. 71 minutes.

3nats-serverRuns100 / 100Go20,855

High-Performance server for NATS.io, the cloud and edge native messaging system.

What the test found: NATS server v2.16.0-dev builds, launches, binds port 4222, and passes real client-server integration tests including cluster pub/sub and auth. 15 minutes.

4watermillRuns100 / 100Go9,912

Building event-driven applications the easy way in Go.

What the test found: Watermill Go library builds and all tests pass with the race detector enabled across all packages including cqrs, delay, fanin, forwarder, metrics, requestreply, requeuer, gochannel, sync, message, middleware, subscriber, internal, internal/publisher, and the root watermill package. 3 minutes.

5risingwaveRuns100 / 100Rust9,364

Event streaming platform for agentic AI. Continuously ingest, transform, and serve event streams in real time, at scale.

What the test found: RisingWave 3.2.0-alpha builds from source, runs in single-node playground mode, and serves PostgreSQL-wire-protocol SQL queries on port 4566 with full DDL, DML, and materialized view support. 57 minutes.

6kombuRuns100 / 100Python3,147

Messaging library for Python.

What the test found: kombu 5.7.0a1 is installed in a /tmp/venv virtual environment with all core and optional transport dependencies (redis, mongodb, sqs, azure, gcpubsub, pyro, yaml, msgpack, sqlalchemy, pgmq, consul, zookeeper) and all 2086 unit tests pass on Python 3.12.3. 5 minutes.

7go-streamsRuns100 / 100Go2,173

A lightweight stream processing library for Go

What the test found: Go 1.22.2 installed, project builds with go build and passes all 100+ tests with go test -count=1 ./... 20 minutes.

8rikoRuns100 / 100Python1,608

A Python stream processing engine modeled after Yahoo! Pipes

What the test found: All 903 tests pass, the `run-pipe` CLI outputs correct results for demo/simple1 pipelines, and the compile/gen-config/codegen tools regenerate successfully with ruff 0.16.5 formatting. 26 minutes.

9apalisRuns100 / 100Rust1,408

Type-safe, extensible, and high-performance background processing library for Rust

What the test found: The apalis workspace builds, all 127 tests pass (apalis: 18 tests, apalis-core: 86 tests, apalis-workflow: 9 tests, plus integration and doc-tests), and in-memory-backend examples (basic, deps-injection, unique-jobs-example) execute end-to-end without error. 8 minutes.

10fluent-bitRuns96 / 100C8,138

Fast and Lightweight Logs, Metrics and Traces processor for Linux, BSD, OSX and Windows

What the test found: Fluent Bit v5.1.3 builds from source. Binary launches at /work/repo/build/bin/fluent-bit. 96/97 internal tests pass; the flb-it-network IPv6 test fails because IPv6 is disabled in the container. 36 minutes.

11walrusRuns96 / 100Rust1,935

🦭 Distributed log streaming engine built from first principles

What the test found: A 3-node Walrus cluster runs with Raft consensus (node 1 Leader, nodes 2 and 3 Followers), all three nodes accept topic registration and message put/get operations, with full 3-node membership in Raft metrics. 64 minutes.

12faststreamRuns80 / 100Python5,361

Asynchronous Python framework for event-driven services. A thin client for Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, Redis and MQTT with full access to native broker features...

What the test found: FastStream 0.7.7 is installed and all in-memory test suites pass: 4526 non-connected tests pass across Kafka, RabbitMQ, NATS, Redis, Confluent, and MQTT brokers, with CLI, ASGI, and AsyncAPI documentation generation working correctly. 42 minutes.

13rsmqRuns60 / 100JavaScript1,824

Redis Simple Message Queue

What the test found: RSMQ 0.13.0 installed and all 93 tests pass against Redis 7.2.0 on 127.0.0.1:6379; send/receive/delete verified via real Redis. 6 minutes.

14blazingmqRuns50 / 100C++3,214

A modern high-performance open source message queuing system

What the test found: BlazingMQ broker, CLI tool, and storage tool binaries are built and functional with 212/212 unit tests passing. 75 minutes.

15flink-learningRuns with mocks92 / 100Java15,099

flink learning blog. http://www.54tianzhisheng.cn/ 含 Flink 入门、概念、原理、实战、性能调优、源码解析等内容。涉及 Flink Connector、Metrics、Library、DataStream API、Table API & SQL...

What the test found: The full 94-module Maven reactor builds successfully with all compilation errors fixed; 78 JARs are produced; the test suite runs with only 3 pre-existing timezone-dependent assertion failures in DateUtilTests and 1 pre-existing Kafka-required error in SqlSubmitTest; all other tests pass. 53 minutes.

16liftbridgeRuns with mocks92 / 100Go2,802

Kafka-style message streaming in Go. Built on NATS. Single binary, no JVM, no ZooKeeper.

What the test found: The binary builds, all unit tests pass, and the server starts with embedded NATS, binds to port 9292, elects itself metadata leader, and logs normal operation. 21 minutes.

17svix-webhooksRuns with mocks71 / 100Rust3,439

The open source and enterprise-ready webhooks service 🦀

What the test found: Python client library installs and passes all applicable unit tests (31/31), webhook verification module works end-to-end, CLI tool runs correctly via npx and produces valid signatures. 13 minutes.

18enqueue-devRuns with mocks56 / 100PHP2,221

Message Queue, Job Queue, Broadcasting, WebSockets packages for PHP, Symfony, Laravel, Magento. DEVELOPMENT REPOSITORY - provided by Forma-Pro

What the test found: PHP 8.2.13 and Composer 2.10.3 installed; all 169 Composer dependencies resolved and vendor autoloader generated; RdKafkaConnectionFactory input validation fixed to throw LogicException before librdkafka check; core enqueue test suite passes 1153/1154 tests; full 3136-test suite runs with 134 errors and 11 failures... 17 minutes.

19robustmqCould not verify10 / 100Rust1,829

Communication infrastructure for the AI era, one binary, one broker, one storage layer, any protocol

What the test found: could not be verified; the log shows where it stopped. 21 minutes.

20fluvioCould not verify0 / 100Rust5,259

🦀 event stream processing for developers to collect and transform data in motion to power responsive data intensive applications.

What the test found: could not be verified; the log shows where it stopped. 87 minutes.

21siddhiCould not verify0 / 100Java1,594

Stream Processing and Complex Event Processing Engine

What the test found: could not be verified; the log shows where it stopped. 87 minutes.

-arroyoNot yet verified-Rust5,049-
-numaflowNot yet tested-Rust2,831-
-json-machineNot yet tested-PHP1,330-
-message-ioNot yet tested-Rust1,198-
-rxRustNot yet tested-Rust1,118-
-spring-cloud-streamNot yet tested-Java1,069-
-rmqttNot yet tested-Rust1,023-
-saqNot yet tested-Python890-
-coreNot yet tested-Go798-
-streampipesNot yet tested-Java751-
-jafkaNot yet tested-Java720-
-iwfNot yet tested-Go662-
-radio-activeNot yet tested-Python602-
-bunqueueNot yet tested-TypeScript582-
-nats.cNot yet tested-C507-
-ipcNot yet tested-C++501-
-FutureSDRNot yet tested-Rust481-
-cspNot yet tested-Python444-
-kurentoNot yet tested-C441-
-httpmqNot yet tested-Go319-
-enqueue-bundleNot yet tested-PHP276-
-dspatchNot yet tested-C++258-
-headsonNot yet tested-Rust254-
-function-meshNot yet tested-Go228-
-wingfoilNot yet tested-Rust228-
-varmqNot yet tested-Go208-

runs installed and started with its real dependencies. runs with mocks started after stand-ins replaced external services such as a database or a third-party API. could not verify neither the standard agent nor the stronger one got it running within the time limit; the log shows where it stopped.

How we tested

On this list as of the latest test: 14 projects ran as-is, 4 with mocks, 3 could not be verified, 26 still waiting. Languages tested: C, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Rust. Every attempt used a clean single-use machine, the subject at a pinned version, and a 45-minute limit; the complete procedure is on the methodology page.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How is this list ranked?

By measurement, not opinion: projects Argusic installed and launched on a fresh machine come first, then those that ran with mocks in place of external services, then those it could not verify. Ties go to the Argusic Score, then how popular it is on its own source.

Why are some projects unranked?

26 projects are still waiting for a test or for a finished attempt. They are listed without a rank until Argusic has measured them.

Where is the evidence?

Every row links to the project's Argusic page, where each run has a full log and a terminal recording stored with a sha256 fingerprint. The same pages exist for every one of the tested projects, on this list or not.

More lists in this category

All lists: Best. All tested projects: subjects.

Open source message queues and streaming, tested | Argusic