redpanda-data/redpanda

What it is

Redpanda is a streaming data platform aimed at developers who work with event streams, microservices and real-time pipelines. Its main selling point is compatibility with the Kafka API while replacing the JVM and ZooKeeper with a C++ implementation, so existing Kafka clients and tooling can target it. The project positions itself as a faster alternative for Kafka-style workloads.

Project status

The GitHub repository is archived and read-only (archived notice). This page is no longer where active work happens: open issues and discussions moved to redpanda-data/community (community repository), and installation, release information and current documentation live on the product docs site rather than in this repo.

Getting started

Because the repo is archived, there is no in-repo build or quickstart flow to follow. The documented entry point is the official Quickstart (Quickstart), which covers installing Redpanda; release history is tracked separately in the release notes. Anyone evaluating the platform should start from those docs and the product site (redpanda.com) instead of expecting dev source here to be current.

Constraints

Licensing is not the usual open-source arrangement: the Community Edition is distributed under the Redpanda Community Edition License (license), so check its terms before assuming OSI-style freedoms. The repo being archived also means issues, discussions and fixes should be directed to the community repository, not filed here.

HotRepo's take

On 2026-11-13 the project appeared on the C++ daily list with a best position of 9 and 12,678 stars and 805 forks, with no star growth recorded that day. That is a single snapshot rather than a trend, and it reflects residual attention to an archived repository rather than active development. The practical read is that Redpanda remains a notable Kafka-compatible C++ platform, but its public engineering hub has moved on from this repo.