Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ are two open-source and commercially-supported pub/sub systems, readily adopted by enterprises. RabbitMQ is an older tool released in 2007 and was a primary component in messaging and SOA systems. Today it is also being used for streaming use cases. Kafka is a newer tool, released in 2011, which from the onset was built for streaming scenarios.

What is RabbitMQ? RabbitMQ is a general purpose message broker that supports protocols including MQTT, AMQP, and STOMP. It can deal with high-throughput use cases, such as online payment processing. It can handle background jobs or act as a message broker between microservices.

What is Apache Kafka? Kafka is a message bus developed for high-ingress data replay and streams. Kafka is a durable message broker that enables applications to process, persist, and re-process streamed data. Kafka has a straightforward routing approach that uses a routing key to send messages to a topic.

https://www.upsolver.com/blog/kafka-versus-rabbitmq-architecture-performance-use-case