What Is RabbitMQ?

RabbitMQ is open-source traditional message-oriented middleware (MOM) that implements the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) as the standard for low-latency message queuing. Written in Erlang and built on the Open Telecom Platform framework in 2007, it’s an older messaging system often used as a message broker.

Although RabbitMQ enables flexible, highly interoperable messaging for a variety of use cases, adopting the messaging broker over other options comes with drawbacks—particularly when message durability and system scalability are critical requirements. A common alternative to RabbitMQ, Confluent's data streaming platform comes with cloud-native Apache Kafka + Flink, 120+ pre-built connectors, and event-driven communication for modern, scalable, stream processing across all apps, systems, and sources.