Delivery Guarantees: At-Most-Once

Learn the concept of at-most-once delivery in event brokers and explore its benefits, trade-offs, and code examples in a Kafka-based system.

Event brokers typically provide several methods of delivery guarantees. Through the interfaces used to both produce and consume an event (API or SDK), the event broker can ensure how messages are delivered:

  • At-most-once delivery

  • At-least-once delivery

  • Effectively once delivery

The delivery method we choose for any given event depends on which benefit we want to achieve. As we explore each delivery method, we will explore examples that highlight the benefits and trade-offs of each.

At-most-once delivery

At-most-once delivery means that the broker will ensure that a produced event is only delivered at most once (obvious, right?). What this means is that as soon as the first consumer processes the event, the broker will not deliver the event to any other consumer. It’s at-most-once delivery, so there’s a possibility that an event will never be delivered: ...