Updated July 19, 2023
Difference Between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ
ZeroMQ is an open-source, high-performance messaging library. It is cross-platform and supports cross languages, and is lightweight and fast. ZeroMQ is a service provider of messaging. A messaging API is required to send and receive messages using these providers. And need to integrate these providers with the application server. ZeroMQ is especially suited for high-performance and low-latency scenarios.
RabbitMQ is a traditional message broker with various message protocols being implemented. To implement the Advance Message Queue Protocol (AMQP), RabbitMQ was initially developed. AMQP standardizes messaging with the help of Producers, brokers, and Consumers.
What is ZeroMQ?
ZeroMQ is a socket-oriented, lightweight message implementation. It is an asynchronous messaging library used in different applications for messaging systems. Unlike other message-oriented middleware, it offers a message queue, but a ZeroMQ device will operate without a dedicated message broker.
Components of ZeroMQ
- Sockets: Using sockets, the user communicates with ZeroMQ. The sockets are much like TCP sockets; the difference is that each socket can handle multiple peer communication.
- Worker Thread: Various objects reside in the worker thread. Every one of these objects is owned by precisely one parent entity (the relationship is denoted in the illustration using a plain line). Many objects are held by sockets directly; nevertheless, there are a few instances where a socket-owned object controls an entity.
Architecture of ZeroMQ
- Listener: A TCP listener entity listens to incoming TCP connections for every new relationship and generates an engine/session object.
- Session: It is the session object that communicates with the ZeroMQ socket.
- Engine: The engine object communicates with the network.
- Pipe: While the sessions get messages shared with the sockets. There are two ways of passing messages inside. The pipe object handles each direction of messages to be passed inside. Each pipe is a switch-free queue designed for fast transmitting messages among threads.
What is RabbitMQ?
It’s a message broker; it accepts and sends messages. It is similar to the post office, where mail is received, stored, and transmitted to the recipient, like RabbitMQ accepts, stores, and forwards binary data blobs (messages).
Components of RabbitMQ
Figure 1 demonstrates basic message consumption with the following components, as discussed below.
- Producer: The producer sends a message to the queue but never uses the queue directly; instead, it uses exchange. Publishing a message means that the producer sends a message to exchange and exchange the message forwards to the queue.
- Exchange: An exchange is responsible for routing messages with links and routing keys to various queues. A binding is a connection or link between an exchange and a queue.
- Queue: It is a pool where messages are stored.
- Consumer: Consuming a message means that the consumer picks up a message from a queue and consumes it.
Head-to-Head Comparison Between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ (Infographics)
Below are the top 7 comparisons between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ:
Key Differences Between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ
The key differences between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ are provided and discussed as follows:
Persistence
- ZeroMQ: ZeroMq doesn’t support persistence. It’s more like you can use a toolbox to create a custom messaging system. This means that if another party is offline, you will lose the message because there is nothing to hold or save messages.
- RabbitMQ: RabbitMQ promotes broker behavior; that is, it supports message persistence.
Message Retention
- ZeroMQ: It does not support message retention. If no subscribers are mentioned, ZeroMQ will drop messages, and the configurable size buffers in memory may fill up even if the subscribers missed out.
- RabbitMQ: RabbitMQ sends the message to the consumer, and the message is removed from the queue once it has been processed and the acknowledgment has arrived.
Performance
- ZeroMQ: ZeroMQ is much faster than RabbitMQ because it doesn’t store messages on the disk, so you don’t need to go back and forth to get messages. It stores messages in memory in small buffers.
- RabbitMQ: RabbitMQ promotes broker functionality; that is, it supports message persistence and is slower.
Throughput
- ZeroMQ: With ZeroMq, one could get a throughput of up to 10,000 messages per 15 milliseconds, which is approximately 66K-70K messages/sec, as it needs less hardware, which results in high throughput.
- RabbitMQ: RabbitMQ gives a throughput of up to 4K -10K messages/sec
Design
- ZeroMQ: ZeroMQ has a first-class definition of the subscription filter. Depending on the prefix match, the subscription filter lets you decide which messages you want to receive. The first frame of each message contains the stream’s logical name, and the second frame contains the actual log record. Instead, we can configure ZeroMQ to render an exact match on the first frame, so we only get the entries we care for.
- RabbitMQ: It uses a smart broker / dumb consumer model that consistently delivers messages to consumers that consume at approximately the same pace as the broker keeps track of consumer status. In its Exchange queue topology, the producer sends a message to an exchange, which then routes it to different queue bindings for consumption by consumers.
Comparison Table Between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ
Below is the major comparison between ZeroMQ vs RabbitMQ:
| Basis of Comparison |
ZeroMQ |
RabbitMQ |
| Origin | Developed by a broad contributor group, which iMatix created. | To implement
AMQP(Advanced Messaging Queueing Protocol).
|
| Performance | It is Faster. | Slower when compared to
ZeroMQ. |
| Throughput | 66K messages/sec | 4K-10K messages/sec |
| Message Retention | No retention. | Acknowledgment based. |
| Persistence | ZeroMQ does not support persistence. | Supports persistence. |
| Design | It has a concept of a Subscription filter. | It has a concept of a queue. |
| Companies using | Binary.com, Runbook,
GraphicWeave, Investing.com, XING. |
Reddit, 9GAG, Robinhood,
MIT, CircleCI, Sentry. |
Conclusion
After thoroughly comparing ZeroMQ and RabbitMQ, we have concluded that ZeroMQ functions as a library for creating brokers and protocols rather than a message broker. Both RabbitMQ and ZeroMQ rely on various messaging aspects.
ZeroMQ focuses much more on the transmission of messages over the wire. Conversely, RabbitMQ focuses on storing, filtering, and monitoring messages. You can get the best of both worlds by combining the two technologies.
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