# apache/incubator-heron

Apache Heron (Incubating) is a realtime, distributed, fault-tolerant stream processing engine from Twitter

Repository: https://github.com/apache/incubator-heron
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/incubator-heron
Homepage: https://heron.apache.org/
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: heron, streaming, messaging
Archived: true
Last push: 2023-03-01T15:11:08+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3995, "days_push": 1281, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3628, forks 581 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:11.979597+00:00)

## What it is
Apache Heron is a realtime, distributed, fault-tolerant stream processing engine originally developed at Twitter as a successor to Apache Storm. The Apache Incubator podling was retired on 2023-01-18 and the project is no longer actively maintained.

## Use cases
- process realtime event streams at scale
- run fault-tolerant distributed stream analytics
- migrate Apache Storm topologies to a faster engine
- build realtime analytics pipelines for high-throughput data
- process clickstream or telemetry data in real time

## When to choose
- you already run Heron and need to maintain an existing deployment
- you need a Storm-compatible topology API with better resource isolation

## When to avoid
- you are starting a new stream processing project - the project was retired from the Apache Incubator in 2023 and is unmaintained
- you want long-term community support or recent releases
- you prefer actively developed alternatives like Apache Flink, Kafka Streams, or Spark Structured Streaming

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: abandoned
- function: streaming, message-queue, data-science
- domain: big-data, microservices
- platform: jvm, self-hosted
- tags: stream-processing, storm-successor, twitter, apache-incubator-retired, fault-tolerant, realtime-analytics, real-time, data-engineering, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- apache/incubator-heron (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:11.979597+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 2026-08-29T18:31:54.360570+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/apache/incubator-heron (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:11.979597+00:00, sha f71487d0c6c4)
  - homepage: https://heron.apache.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:27.032756+00:00, sha 7b5ee7283a7d)
  - site_page: https://incubator.apache.org/guides/releasemanagement.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:27.044507+00:00, sha 5a1176c3d07c)
  - site_page: https://incubator.apache.org/faq.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:27.042486+00:00, sha e5ce05a633fc)
  - site_page: http://www.apache.org/dev (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:27.046328+00:00, sha 307e503f6603)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.