Reactor Kafka is a reactive API for Apache Kafka based on Project Reactor . Reactor Kafka API enables messages to be published to Kafka topics and consumed from Kafka topics using functional APIs with non-blocking back-pressure and very low overheads. This enables applications using Reactor to use Kafka as a message bus or streaming platform and integrate with other systems to provide an end-to-end reactive pipeline.

The value proposition for Reactor Kafka is the efficient utilization of resources in applications with multiple external interactions where Kafka is one of the external systems. End-to-end reactive pipelines benefit from non-blocking back-pressure and efficient use of threads, enabling a large number of concurrent requests to be processed efficiently. The optimizations provided by Project Reactor enable development of reactive applications with very low overheads and predictable capacity planning to deliver low-latency, high-throughput pipelines.