# librdkafka - the Apache Kafka C/C++ client library

**URL:** <https://forum.confluent.io/t/librdkafka-the-apache-kafka-c-c-client-library/156>\
**Category:** Non-Java Clients\
**Created:** [17 November 2020 12:17 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/librdkafka-the-apache-kafka-c-c-client-library/156 "2020-11-17T12:17:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rmoff](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/rmoff/32/3_2.png) [@rmoff](https://forum.confluent.io/u/rmoff)\
**Post date:** [17 November 2020 12:17 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/librdkafka-the-apache-kafka-c-c-client-library/156/1 "2020-11-17T12:17:30Z")

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> **[GitHub - confluentinc/librdkafka: The Apache Kafka C/C++ library](https://github.com/confluentinc/librdkafka)**
>
> The Apache Kafka C/C++ library

**librdkafka** is a C library implementation of the [Apache Kafka](https://kafka.apache.org/) protocol, providing Producer, Consumer and Admin clients. It was designed with message delivery reliability and high performance in mind, current figures exceed 1 million msgs/second for the producer and 3 million msgs/second for the consumer.

**librdkafka** is licensed under the 2-clause BSD license.

# Features

- Full Exactly-Once-Semantics (EOS) support
- High-level producer, including Idempotent and Transactional producers
- High-level balanced KafkaConsumer (requires broker \>= 0.9)
- Simple (legacy) consumer
- Admin client
- Compression: snappy, gzip, lz4, zstd
- [SSL](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/wiki/Using-SSL-with-librdkafka) support
- [SASL](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/wiki/Using-SASL-with-librdkafka) (GSSAPI/Kerberos/SSPI, PLAIN, SCRAM, OAUTHBEARER) support
- Full list of [supported KIPs](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/INTRODUCTION.md#supported-kips)
- Broker version support: \>=0.8 (see [Broker version compatibility](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/INTRODUCTION.md#broker-version-compatibility))
- Guaranteed API stability for C & C++ APIs (ABI safety guaranteed for C)
- [Statistics](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/STATISTICS.md) metrics
- Debian package: librdkafka1 and librdkafka-dev in Debian and Ubuntu
- RPM package: librdkafka and librdkafka-devel
- Gentoo package: dev-libs/librdkafka
- Portable: runs on Linux, MacOS X, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, AIX, …

# Documentation

- Public API in [C header](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/src/rdkafka.h) and [C++ header](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/src-cpp/rdkafkacpp.h).
- Introduction and manual in [INTRODUCTION.md](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/INTRODUCTION.md).
- Configuration properties in [CONFIGURATION.md](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/CONFIGURATION.md).
- Statistics metrics in [STATISTICS.md](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/blob/master/STATISTICS.md).
- [Frequently asked questions](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka/wiki).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rmoff](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/rmoff/32/3_2.png) [@rmoff](https://forum.confluent.io/u/rmoff)\
**Post date:** [22 February 2021 15:27 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/librdkafka-the-apache-kafka-c-c-client-library/156/2 "2021-02-22T15:27:23Z")

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