# liftbridge-io/liftbridge

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

Repository: https://github.com/liftbridge-io/liftbridge
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/liftbridge
Homepage: https://liftbridge.io
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: nats, streaming, messaging, cloud-native, grpc, distributed-systems, liftbridge, golang, go, message-queue, pubsub
Last push: 2026-07-25T02:00:37+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 74/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 94, release rhythm 34, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3246, "days_push": 40, "days_rel": 224, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2799, forks 118 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:22.504649+00:00)

## What it is
Liftbridge is a lightweight, fault-tolerant message streaming system written in Go that implements a durable, replicated message log on top of NATS. It serves as a simpler 'Kafka-lite' alternative to Kafka or Pulsar, shipped as a single binary with no JVM or ZooKeeper dependency.

## Use cases
- add durable streaming semantics to an existing NATS deployment
- replace Kafka with a lighter single-binary message log for Go services
- build event-driven microservices with replicated message streams
- run a lightweight pub/sub log without JVM or ZooKeeper overhead
- ingest high-throughput events with low latency and durable storage

## When to choose
- your stack is Go-centric and you want a canonical Go client and server
- you need Kafka-style durable, replicated streams but not Kafka's operational weight
- you already run NATS and want to add stream replay and durability
- you want a single-binary deployment with no JVM or ZooKeeper

## When to avoid
- you need Kafka's full ecosystem, exactly-once semantics, or huge partition counts
- you require very large message sizes or tiered storage
- you need a mature, battle-tested system at massive scale
- you want managed cloud offerings with broad vendor support

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: message-queue, streaming, rpc
- domain: microservices, backend, developer-tools
- platform: windows, go, self-hosted
- tags: kafka-lite, nats, event-streaming, pubsub, durable-log, grpc, messaging, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- liftbridge-io/liftbridge (main) score 74

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:22.504649+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 2026-08-30T08:14:36.887964+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/liftbridge-io/liftbridge (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:22.504649+00:00, sha 51f0f750f336)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.