# spring-projects/spring-kafka

Provides Familiar Spring Abstractions for Apache Kafka

Repository: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/spring-kafka
Homepage: https://projects.spring.io/spring-kafka
Language: Java
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-08-26T21:55:22+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3836, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 13, "gap_med": 27, "n_releases_24m": 36}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2495, forks 1752 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:56.656970+00:00)

## What it is
Spring for Apache Kafka (spring-kafka) is a Java library that applies familiar Spring abstractions to Apache Kafka-based messaging. It provides KafkaTemplate for sending messages, @KafkaListener for message-driven POJOs, listener containers, transaction support, and an embedded Kafka test jar.

## Use cases
- consume kafka messages in a spring boot app
- publish messages to kafka from java
- set up kafka listeners with annotations
- manage kafka transactions in spring
- retry failed kafka message processing
- test kafka consumers with embedded kafka
- build event-driven microservices with kafka

## When to choose
- you are building Spring or Spring Boot applications that use Apache Kafka
- you want annotation-driven Kafka consumers and a high-level template API
- you need Kafka transaction, retry, or error-handling support integrated with Spring
- you want embedded Kafka for integration testing on the JVM

## When to avoid
- you are not using the Spring ecosystem and prefer the plain kafka-clients API
- you use a different message broker like RabbitMQ or Pulsar
- you need a non-JVM Kafka client

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: message-queue, middleware, developer-tools
- domain: backend, developer-tools, microservices
- platform: jvm
- tags: kafka, spring, messaging, event-streaming, kafkatemplate, kafkalistener

## Member repositories
- spring-projects/spring-kafka (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.656970+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 2026-08-30T02:27:14.200497+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-kafka (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.656970+00:00, sha 41f24658cc14)
  - homepage: https://projects.spring.io/spring-kafka (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.680667+00:00, sha b545af39060c)
  - site_page: https://spring.io/quickstart (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.692888+00:00, sha fc64dd950363)
  - site_page: https://spring.io/projects/spring-restdocs (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.696621+00:00, sha 1e2a101b77d3)
  - site_page: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/messaging.html (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.698438+00:00, sha 297759fa3476)
  - site_page: https://enterprise.spring.io (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.690543+00:00, sha 85ac7d6d5114)
  - site_page: https://enterprise.spring.io/lts-releases (fetched 2026-08-29T10:09:29.694733+00:00, sha 3251cc8760b6)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.