I've used Redpanda and I like it. Its Kafka compliant so all the tools that work with Apache Kafka also work with Redpanda. Plus, no JVM and no zookeeper.
Redpanda most importantly is faster that Apache Kafka. We were able to get a lot more throughput. Its also stable, especially compared to dealing with anything that requires a JVM.
have some of you some experience with those and able to give pros/cons?