PicoMQ is a single-binary message queue that persists to S3. No cluster, no Zookeeper, no JVM tuning — just replayable events.
Join 500+ developers waiting for a simpler stream.
Every week, another startup hits the same wall: they need to process events reliably, but standing up Kafka is a project in itself. The Show HN thread for a similar idea scored 146 points — developers are clearly frustrated with the operational weight of traditional message brokers. They want the durability of a log, not the burden of a cluster.
Existing solutions miss the mark. Redis Streams are fast but live in memory — one restart and your events are gone. SQS is managed but locks you into AWS and charges per API call. NATS JetStream is better, but you still have to run and monitor a server. None of them give you the simplicity of "just write to S3" with the guarantee that your data is safe, replayable, and cheap.
The timing is finally right. Object storage costs have plummeted — Cloudflare R2 charges zero egress fees, and S3's standard tier is now under $0.023/GB. This makes the "stream on object storage" architecture not just feasible, but the most cost-effective option for 90% of teams. The window is open, and PicoMQ is built to fill it.
Run a single 5MB Go binary — no JVM, no Zookeeper, no dependencies. Configure your S3-compatible bucket with two environment variables and you're live in under five minutes.
Send a standard HTTP POST with a JSON body to your PicoMQ endpoint. The message is immediately written to object storage, durably and atomically, with automatic partitioning.
Consumers subscribe via long-polling or SSE. Need to reprocess? Just rewind the stream to any point in time — your data is in S3, so replay is instant and infinite.
No cluster to manage, no Zookeeper to babysit, no JVM heap tuning. PicoMQ is a single static binary that runs anywhere — your laptop, a $5 VPS, or a container. If it runs, it works.
Your messages live in S3, not memory. Delete the container, lose the server — your stream is still there, intact and replayable. That's the kind of persistence Redis can't offer.
Forget per-message fees and cluster minimums. With PicoMQ, your cost is just the S3 storage you use — typically under $5/month for a small app. No surprise bills, no vendor lock-in.