Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon SQS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.5%, up from 21.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.5%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for asynchronous communication, enabling services to operate independently but issues with stability
The feature of ActiveMQ which I feel is good is its ability to have DLP, the later queues. If something goes wrong with the platform, it retries. Even if it fails, it goes to DLP, and later we can rescan the same event for processing. The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable.
Ariel Tarayants - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful queue system facilitates seamless asynchronous operations
A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue. Enhanced filtering on the messages would be beneficial, as currently one has to pull all messages out, filter the right one by code, and then re-insert the remaining messages. This solution is not effective with the FIFO queue.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"The most valuable features include the ability to handle a huge number of messages and the presence of a dead letter queue."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"We used SQS for the Kapolei system to ensure that certain tasks were executed precisely once. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) capability was a great feature for us. Additionally, its redundancy out of the box meant we didn't have to worry about missing messages. It provided peace of mind and automatically instilled trust, relieving us of any concerns."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"I like how we can subscribe to multiple topics in Amazon SQS. It's also much simpler and quicker to set up than other solutions. It also supports patterns like Kafka and RapidMQ's fan-out pattern but with easier implementation."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is the interface."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"Amazon SQS provides faster search through indexing via OpenSearch."
 

Cons

"The UI. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. The UI is too simple. Sometimes you wanna see the messages coming to the queue, and you have to refresh the dashboard, the console of the product."
"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"There are some stability issues."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage. That model includes a single point of failure in that storage medium."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"Support could be improved."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"There are some issues with SQS's transaction queue regarding knowing if something has been received."
"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."
"The search should be more user-friendly, allowing me to search for a longer period of time and return results faster."
"A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"I think the software is free."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"It's quite expensive."
"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"Amazon SQS offers a generous free tier, beyond which it remains very cost-effective. The cost per million messages is less than a dollar, making it an economical choice."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
We need to address the non-deterministic load issues. Sometimes, ActiveMQ either restarts automatically or goes into ActiveMQ mode, causing interruptions. We need to enhance stability and improve t...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
We have a digital ID platform that uses various services running on Kafka. There are two main endpoints where services interact with external services. These include an automatic biometric service ...
What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
AWS provides another messaging service, which is fine for certain purposes. SQS meets the cloud messaging workload requirements. However, combining the features of both products could be an easier ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I primarily use SQL Server for messaging services, and I need to offer loose couplings. SQS is handy for offloading non-urgent tasks that can be reverted later. I use it as a queue management servi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.