KAFKA AT THE LOW END: HOW BAD CAN IT GET?

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Kafka does poorly as a job queue. It unfairly assigns jobs to workers, even if other workers have nothing to do. Kafka is not a bad tool, it is just not designed for low volume - it was designed for scenarios where a conventional single-node message broker can't keep up. If that speed isn't required, then it's better to use a conventional broker with more suitable features (at least until Queues for Kafka comes along).