Kafka Share Groups - Pathological Fetch Waits with Record_limit

2026-06-29

A notable performance pitfall in Kafka Share Groups arises when using record_limit with fewer consumers than partitions, especially under partition skew. This leads to pathological fetch waits, which can drastically slow consumption during backlog drains or skewed workloads. The simplest mitigation is to use at least as many consumers as partitions when running with record_limit.