# zendesk/ruby-kafka

A Ruby client library for Apache Kafka

Repository: https://github.com/zendesk/ruby-kafka
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ruby-kafka
Homepage: http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/ruby-kafka
Language: Ruby
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: kafka-client, kafka, ruby, ruby-gem, deprecated
Last push: 2026-08-13T14:59:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 66/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 97, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3880, "days_push": 20, "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 1282, forks 331 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:13.961122+00:00)

## What it is
A pure-Ruby client library for Apache Kafka providing producer and consumer APIs with support for consumer groups, batching, compression, partitioning, SSL/SASL security, and Statsd/Datadog metrics. It is officially deprecated: development has stopped in favor of the rdkafka-ruby bindings to librdkafka, and only security patches and bug fixes are expected.

## Use cases
- publish messages to Kafka from a Ruby application
- consume Kafka topic messages with consumer groups in Ruby
- integrate Kafka into a Rails app
- produce Kafka messages asynchronously with buffering and compression
- connect to Kafka with SSL encryption and SASL authentication from Ruby
- report Kafka client metrics to Statsd or Datadog
- batch-consume Kafka messages while balancing throughput and latency

## When to choose
- You maintain an existing Ruby codebase already built on ruby-kafka and only need bug/security fixes
- You must support legacy Kafka clusters (0.8-1.1) where this client had full support
- You cannot install the native librdkafka C dependency that rdkafka-ruby requires

## When to avoid
- Starting any new Ruby/Kafka project - use rdkafka-ruby (librdkafka bindings) instead
- Production systems that need full support for recent Kafka versions (only limited support beyond Kafka 1.0)
- You need a client that keeps pace with new Kafka features or wants ongoing community support
- You require guaranteed long-term maintenance and production readiness

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: message-queue, streaming
- domain: microservices
- platform: ruby
- tags: kafka-client, apache-kafka, ruby-gem, event-streaming, producer-consumer, consumer-groups, deprecated, statsd, datadog, rails, messaging

## Member repositories
- zendesk/ruby-kafka (main) score 66

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:13.961122+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 2026-08-30T04:58:16.408799+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/zendesk/ruby-kafka (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:13.961122+00:00, sha fe12244ea450)
  - homepage: http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/ruby-kafka (fetched 2026-08-29T12:12:51.326508+00:00, sha 0e5873df8808)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.