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Dev tools · February 10, 2026

BlazeMQ – 52KB Kafka-compatible broker in C++20, zero dependencies

I built a message broker that speaks the Kafka wire protocol, so any Kafka client (librdkafka, kafka-python, kcat, etc.) works without code changes. The entire binary is 52KB. No JVM, no ZooKeeper, no third-party libraries — just C++20 with kqueue&#x2F;epoll. Starts in <10ms, uses 0% CPU when idle. I built this because running Kafka locally for development is painful — gigabytes of RAM, slow startup, ZooKeeper&#x2F;KRaft configuration. I just wanted something that accepts produce requests and gets out of the way. Technical details: - Single-threaded event loop (kqueue on macOS, epoll on…

BlazeMQ – 52KB Kafka-compatible broker in C++20, zero dependencies launched on February 10, 2026 with 5 votes, #1,882 of 16,627 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 11% of February 2026

What it does

Sub-millisecond, Kafka-compatible message broker written in C++20. Zero dependencies, single binary, drop-in Kafka replacement for local development. - awneesht/Strike-mq

In the maker’s words, at launch

I built a message broker that speaks the Kafka wire protocol, so any Kafka client (librdkafka, kafka-python, kcat, etc.) works without code changes. The entire binary is 52KB. No JVM, no ZooKeeper, no third-party libraries — just C++20 with kqueue&#x2F;epoll. Starts in <10ms, uses 0% CPU when idle. I built this…

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