I Replaced Kafka, Redis, and RabbitMQ with One Tool – A Deep Dive into NATS (medium.com)

The article argues that NATS can replace a stack of Kafka (streaming/durability), Redis (in-memory pub/sub), and RabbitMQ (messaging) by providing pub/sub, request/reply, queue groups, and JetStream within one system. It explains key behaviors such as Core NATS being ephemeral (dropping messages to slow/disconnected consumers) versus JetStream adding disk persistence, and highlights how subject naming (tokens, wildcards, and hierarchy) determines routing and stream/filter granularity. The author also compares NATS request/reply to gRPC/RPC patterns, emphasizing that it’s built from basic pub/sub using temporary inbox subjects and protocol-level “no responders” handling.