--- title: Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share... description: A detailed performance benchmarking comparison of Apache Kafka's traditional consumer groups versus the newer share groups, using the Dimster benchmarking tool... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share Groups (overhead test) — Jack Vanlightly | daily.dev og:description: A detailed performance benchmarking comparison of Apache Kafka's traditional consumer groups versus the newer share groups, using the Dimster benchmarking tool... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/RigNTIIsG.png og:image:alt: Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share Groups (overhead test) — Jack Vanlightly og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share Groups (overhead test) — Jack Vanlightly **[Jack Vanlightly](https://daily.dev/sources/jack-vanlightly)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A detailed performance benchmarking comparison of Apache Kafka's traditional consumer groups versus the newer share groups, using the Dimster benchmarking tool on a local k3d Kubernetes cluster and AWS EKS. Tests cover throughput (explore mode) and latency (run mode) across multiple scenarios with varying partition counts, topic counts, and fanout configurations. Key findings: share groups are broadly comparable to consumer groups in raw throughput and may even outperform them in high-fanout scenarios, but they add measurable latency overhead and consume more CPU due to additional accounting and state management. The post explicitly notes these are synthetic overhead tests, not realistic workloads, and a follow-up will test share groups with simulated consumer processing time where their advantages are expected to emerge. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Kafka Queue Semantics Now GA with Share Consumer API](https://daily.dev/posts/kafka-queue-semantics-now-ga-with-share-consumer-api-aqzvx7ajg) · Confluent Blog · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How Apache Kafka flexed to support queues](https://daily.dev/posts/how-apache-kafka-flexed-to-support-queues-ytdb29stz) · InfoWorld · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Architecting Cloud-Native Kafka: From Tiered Storage Towards a Diskless Future](https://daily.dev/posts/architecting-cloud-native-kafka-from-tiered-storage-towards-a-diskless-future-pnyqctfwr) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How routing keys isolate Kafka consumer tests on a shared broker](https://daily.dev/posts/how-routing-keys-isolate-kafka-consumer-tests-on-a-shared-broker-9xb1zmvqy) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Apache Kafka performance \#1](https://daily.dev/posts/apache-kafka-performance-1-dc6zd9py1) · Jack Vanlightly · 5 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#apache-kafka](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-kafka) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share Groups (overhead test) — Jack Vanlightly","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T07:01:19.601Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T07:04:36.622Z","description":"A detailed performance benchmarking comparison of Apache Kafka's traditional consumer groups versus the newer share groups, using the Dimster benchmarking tool...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/94d7b08b95fdd7c59c30d5e4e7a5e6f1?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/94d7b08b95fdd7c59c30d5e4e7a5e6f1?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Jack Vanlightly","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Jack Vanlightly","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--lIrxyl_V--/f_auto,q_auto/v1781695531/logos/jack-vanlightly?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/jack-vanlightly"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/benchmarking-apache-kafka-consumer-groups-vs-share-groups-overhead-test-jack-vanlightly-rigntiisg","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"distributed-systems,apache-kafka","timeRequired":"PT9M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Jack Vanlightly","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/jack-vanlightly"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Benchmarking Apache Kafka Consumer Groups vs Share Groups (overhead test) — Jack Vanlightly"}]} ```