Apache Pulsar 是一个开源的云原生消息流平台。其多层架构使组织能够在弹性云环境中构建持久、可扩展、可靠的应用程序。成千上万的公司将 Pulsar 用于高性能数据管道、事件驱动的微服务、实时分析和其他实时工作负载。Pulsar 最初是由雅虎开发，并于 2016 年开源。

Apache Kafka 是一个开源的单体流平台。企业通常会将 Kafka 用于流式传输场景，例如高性能数据管道和流式分析。Kafka 最初由 LinkedIn 开发，并于 2011 年开源。

Pulsar provides a multi-layer architecture that decouples storage and compute. Pulsar’s design allows organizations to elastically scale storage independently from compute and achieve different levels of resource isolation. In contrast, Kafka has a monolithic architecture that tightly couples compute and storage, where resources must be scaled together.

Pulsar has the flexibility to serve a wide range of messaging and event streaming use cases in one platform. Users can deploy Pulsar as a centralized messaging platform as well as for batch and event streaming. In comparison, Kafka primarily targets event streaming use cases, with only limited messaging support.