Expose consumer lag as a number instead of a guess

A queue that feels backed up, with no real number behind the feeling.

IntermediateRead 7 minDoing: an afternoon7 steps

What you'll have at the end

A live gap-per-group number, tracked for its trend, with one alert per group that only fires while that gap is genuinely growing.

Before you start

You need

At least one consumer group already reading a real topic, and a metrics system already scraping this service, with nothing yet reporting how far behind that group's confirmed position sits.

Not covered

Deciding whether a growing gap means adding a consumer instance, or fixing whatever inside one consumer is actually running slow, both stay out of this recipe: it only gets you the honest number and the page that reacts to it correctly.

Leans on

7 steps

Where to go next

Is your queue growing because you need more workers

Once the alert confirms a real, still-growing gap instead of a batch blip, this is where you work out whether adding a consumer actually fixes it.

Checked 19 Aug 2026

Part of the Backend Observability and Monitoring cookbook