kafka-cli

Kafka CLI

A lightweight command-line tool for managing Apache Kafka clusters. It supports topic and consumer group administration, message producing/consuming, TLS/SASL authentication, and SSH tunneling.

Trademark Notice: Apache Kafka and Kafka are registered trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation.

Installation

go install github.com/aaronjheng/kafka-cli/cmd/kafka@latest

If you need the newest master commit immediately (without relying on branch-resolution cache), install by resolved commit SHA:

go install github.com/aaronjheng/kafka-cli/cmd/kafka@$(git ls-remote https://github.com/aaronjheng/kafka-cli.git refs/heads/master | cut -f1)

Configuration

See kafka.example.yaml for reference.

Config File Search Order

1. Path specified by --config / -f flag
2. ./kafka.yaml (current directory)
3. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kafka/kafka.yaml
   • Linux: ~/.config/kafka/kafka.yaml
   • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/kafka/kafka.yaml

If no config file is found, a default configuration is used with a default cluster pointing to 127.0.0.1:9092.

Config Fields

Field	Description
default_cluster	Default cluster name used when --cluster is not specified
clusters	Map of cluster name to cluster config

Each cluster supports the following fields:

Field	Required	Description
brokers	Yes	List of Kafka broker addresses (e.g. host:port)
tls	No	TLS configuration
sasl	No	SASL authentication configuration
ssh	No	SSH proxy/tunnel configuration

tls

Field	Description
insecure	Skip TLS certificate verification (for self-signed/dev clusters)
cafile	Path to CA certificate file (PEM format)

sasl

Field	Description
mechanism	SASL mechanism: PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-256, or SCRAM-SHA-512
username	Authentication username
password	Authentication password

ssh

Field	Required	Description
host	Yes	SSH bastion host address
port	Yes	SSH port (e.g. 22)
user	Yes	SSH user name
identity_file	No	Path to SSH private key. If not specified, the following default keys are tried in order: ~/.ssh/id_ed25519, ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa, ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Usage

All commands support the following global flags:

• --config / -f — Specify config file path
• --cluster / -c — Specify cluster name (defaults to default_cluster in config)

kafka config cat

Print the effective configuration file contents.

kafka config cat

kafka cluster describe

Show cluster overview (controller ID, number of brokers/topics, and broker details).

kafka cluster describe

kafka topic list

List all topics in the cluster.

kafka topic list

kafka topic create TOPIC

Create a new topic.

# Create a topic with default settings (3 partitions, replication factor 1)
kafka topic create my-topic

# Specify partitions and replication factor
kafka topic create my-topic --partitions 6 --replication-factor 3

kafka topic alter TOPIC

Alter the partition count of a topic.

kafka topic alter my-topic --partitions 6

kafka topic delete TOPIC [TOPIC...]

Delete one or more topics.

kafka topic delete my-topic
kafka topic delete topic-a topic-b

kafka topic describe TOPIC

Show details of a topic (partitions, replicas, ISR, etc.).

kafka topic describe my-topic

kafka topic get-offsets TOPIC

Show the oldest and newest offsets for each partition of a topic.

kafka topic get-offsets my-topic

kafka topic consume TOPIC

Consume messages from a topic in real time. By default all partitions are consumed; use --partition / -p to consume a specific partition.

Note: The consumer starts from the latest offset (LastOffset), not the beginning of the topic.

# Consume all partitions
kafka topic consume my-topic

# Consume a specific partition
kafka topic consume my-topic -p 0

kafka topic produce TOPIC

Produce messages to a topic by reading from stdin. Empty lines are skipped. Press Ctrl+D to finish.

# Interactive input
kafka topic produce my-topic
hello world
foo bar
^D

# Pipe data from a file
cat messages.txt | kafka topic produce my-topic

# Produce key-value messages using a separator
kafka topic produce my-topic --key-separator ":"
key1:value1
key2:value2
^D

kafka group list

List all consumer groups in the cluster.

kafka group list

kafka group describe GROUP

Show details of a consumer group (state, protocol, members, etc.).

kafka group describe my-group

kafka group offsets GROUP

Show committed offsets and partition lag for a consumer group. Use --topic to limit output to one topic.

kafka group offsets my-group
kafka group offsets my-group --topic my-topic

kafka group lag GROUP

Show aggregated and partition-level lag for a consumer group. Use --topic to limit output to one topic.

kafka group lag my-group
kafka group lag my-group --topic my-topic

kafka group delete GROUP [GROUP...]

Delete one or more consumer groups.

kafka group delete my-group

kafka version

Print version information.

kafka version

Shell Completion

kafka supports shell completion for Bash, Zsh, and Fish.

# Load completion for current session
source <(kafka completion bash)  # or zsh / fish

To install permanently, run kafka completion <shell> --help for instructions.

License

Kafka CLI is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License. See LICENSE for more details.