# Backpressure in Distributed Systems

DevFeed: [Backpressure in Distributed Systems](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/backpressure-in-distributed-systems-39399.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.pranshu-raj.in/posts/backpressure/>)

Author: Pranshu Raj

Published: 2026-07-23T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Pranshu Raj - blog on backend systems, performance and sidequests](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/pranshu-raj-blog-on-backend-systems-performance-and-sidequests.md>)

Topics: [backpressure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/backpressure.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Messaging](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/messaging.md>), [real-time](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/real-time.md>)

Tags: [backpressure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backpressure.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [go](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/go.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [memory](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/memory.md>), [messages](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/messages.md>), [messaging](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/messaging.md>), [real-time](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/real-time.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial explains backpressure in distributed systems, including how it occurs when message producers outpace consumers and the resulting risks such as memory exhaustion, dropped messages, lower throughput, network waste, increased latency, and blocked producers. It introduces producer, messaging-system, and consumer roles and relates the topic to a real-time leaderboard project.

## Source excerpt

Understanding what it is, how to deal with it, where it's used and how I handled it in the real time leaderboard.