# edenhill/kcat

Generic command line non-JVM Apache Kafka producer and consumer

Repository: https://github.com/edenhill/kcat
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/kcat
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2024-07-09T16:13:37+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4539, "days_push": 785, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5778, forks 501 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:29.530082+00:00)

## What it is
kcat (formerly kafkacat) is a lightweight, non-JVM command-line tool for producing to and consuming from Apache Kafka topics, akin to netcat for Kafka. It also supports consumer groups, metadata inspection, and Avro deserialization via Confluent Schema Registry.

## Use cases
- produce test messages to a kafka topic from the command line
- consume and inspect messages from a kafka topic
- debug kafka pipelines by viewing raw messages
- list kafka brokers, topics, and partitions metadata
- consume kafka messages with avro schema registry deserialization
- test kafka consumer group behavior
- pipe files or stdin into kafka quickly

## When to choose
- you need a fast, lightweight CLI for quick Kafka debugging without JVM overhead
- you want to script Kafka produce/consume operations in shell pipelines
- you need to inspect cluster metadata or troubleshoot message content

## When to avoid
- you need a full Kafka Streams or stream processing application
- you require a GUI-based Kafka management tool
- you need long-running production consumers with complex offset management

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: message-queue, cli, serialization, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: windows, cli, cross-platform
- tags: kafka, kafkacat, producer, consumer, avro, schema-registry, netcat-for-kafka, debugging, messaging, command-line, data-engineering, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- edenhill/kcat (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:29.530082+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 2026-08-29T17:52:51.480905+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/edenhill/kcat (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:29.530082+00:00, sha b8358d2ffe33)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.