Comparison Guide

Last Updated: 2026-02-05

This document provides a basic, evergreen comparison guide without hard claims about third‑party products. Vendor feature sets change frequently; verify details with official docs before making a decision.

FluxMQ Snapshot (from current codebase)

• Protocols: MQTT 3.1.1/5.0 (TCP, WebSocket), HTTP publish bridge, CoAP publish bridge, AMQP 1.0 and AMQP 0.9.1
• Queues: Durable queues, consumer groups, ack/nack/reject; stream queues supported; retention policies (time/size/message count)
• DLQ: Handler exists, automatic DLQ routing not wired yet
• Clustering: Embedded etcd coordination, gRPC routing, session takeover, hybrid retained storage, optional Raft for queue appends
• Storage: BadgerDB or in‑memory; pluggable interfaces
• Security: TLS/mTLS, WebSocket origin validation, rate limiting
• Observability: OpenTelemetry metrics/tracing (OTLP); no native Prometheus endpoint
• Clients: Go MQTT client, Go AMQP 0.9.1 client (AMQP 1.0 client not provided)

How to Compare Systems (by category)

MQTT‑Native Brokers

Best fit when:

• MQTT 5.0 features and device connectivity are the primary focus
• Edge/IoT workloads need lightweight clients and topic‑based routing

Queue‑Centric Brokers

Best fit when:

• Work‑queue semantics and explicit acknowledgments are primary
• Fine‑grained retry/DLQ handling is critical

Log‑Centric Brokers

Best fit when:

• Long‑term event retention and replay are primary
• Stream processing and analytics require strong log semantics

Multi‑Protocol Brokers

Best fit when:

• You need multiple client protocols in a single deployment
• Cross‑protocol routing and shared durability are important

Decision Checklist

• Protocols you must support (MQTT, AMQP, HTTP, CoAP)
• Delivery guarantees required (QoS 0/1/2, at‑least‑once, exactly‑once)
• Durability and retention needs (time/size retention, replay)
• Operational complexity you can tolerate (single binary vs external dependencies)
• Cluster behavior (session takeover, routing, replication strategy)
• Observability requirements (OTLP, Prometheus, tracing)
• Client library availability and ecosystem fit

Notes

• FluxMQ is still evolving. For current status of features and limitations, see Durable queues, Configuration reference, and Roadmap.
• Benchmarking should be done on your target hardware using benchmarks/.