# emitter-io/emitter

High performance, distributed and low latency publish-subscribe platform.

Repository: https://github.com/emitter-io/emitter
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/emitter
Homepage: https://emitter.io
Language: Go
License: AGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: pubsub, networking, emitter, mqtt, mqtt-broker, realtime, high-performance, low-latency, golang, go
Last push: 2026-04-29T14:51:46+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 58/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 79, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3595, "days_push": 126, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4004, forks 360 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:32.147449+00:00)

## What it is
Emitter is a distributed, high-performance publish-subscribe messaging platform built on the MQTT protocol, written in Go. It supports message storage with history and expiry, secure channel keys, TLS encryption, monitoring integrations, and clustered deployment via Docker and Kubernetes.

## Use cases
- self-host an MQTT broker for real-time messaging
- build a real-time chat system with pub/sub channels
- stream IoT sensor data from devices at scale
- add low-latency messaging to an online game
- push live updates to web dashboards
- store and replay messages for offline subscribers
- run a fault-tolerant pub/sub cluster in Kubernetes

## When to choose
- you need millions of messages per second with low latency
- you want MQTT with message history, expiry, and secure channel keys
- you need a horizontally scalable, self-hosted pub/sub cluster
- your use case is gaming, IoT, or real-time web with binary messaging

## When to avoid
- you need a simple message queue with consumer groups like Kafka or RabbitMQ semantics
- you require request/reply or job queue patterns rather than pub/sub
- you cannot accept the AGPL-3.0 license in your product
- you need a managed service without operating your own brokers

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: message-queue, websocket, http-server, monitoring, security, middleware
- domain: iot, microservices, networking, self-hosted
- platform: windows, self-hosted, go, cross-platform
- tags: mqtt-broker, pubsub, realtime-messaging, low-latency, message-storage, channel-keys, iot-messaging, gaming-networking, messaging, real-time, linux, macos, docker, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- emitter-io/emitter (main) score 58

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.147449+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:24:05.646633+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/emitter-io/emitter (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.147449+00:00, sha 02056b01df54)
  - homepage: https://emitter.io (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:05.304133+00:00, sha cfce378e69ce)
  - site_page: https://emitter.io/features (fetched 2026-08-29T09:17:05.306673+00:00, sha ae886ed137aa)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.