What is the maximum number of consumer groups that can read the same Kafka topic simultaneously?

There is no hard limit on the number of consumer groups reading the same topic simultaneously. Each consumer group maintains its own independent offset tracking in __consumer_offsets. 100 consumer groups can all read the same topic — each gets its own full copy of all messages, with its own lag tracking, independently. The primary constraints are: 1) Broker CPU/network for serving N groups' fetch requests. 2) __consumer_offsets storage for N groups' offset commits. 3) Consumer side resources. In practice, teams have used thousands of consumer groups on the same topic (e.g., one group per tenant in multi-tenant systems).

Expected key concepts: no hard limit, independent offset tracking, __consumer_offsets, full copy, each group, broker CPU, network, thousands, multi-tenant, per tenant, simultaneously