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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
30
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

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"It provides the best support services."
"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"There is a vibrant community, and it is one of the strongest points of this product. We always get answers to our problems. So, my experience with the community support has been good."
"One of the useful features is the ability to schedule a call after a certain number of messages accumulate in the container. For example, if there are ten messages in the container, you can perform a specific action."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"We use the tool in interface integrations."
"It is stable and scalable."
"With SQS, we can trigger events in various cloud environments. It offers numerous benefits for us."
"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."
"The scale it manages is quite impressive."
 

Cons

"There are some stability issues."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"I would like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."
"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."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"Sending or receiving messages takes some time, and it could be quicker."
"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."
"Support could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s open source, ergo free."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I think the software is free."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"It's quite expensive."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
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?
The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days. It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for lo...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I primarily use Amazon SQS ( /products/amazon-sqs-reviews ) for asynchronous messaging. It is part of our distributed system design, where we use it for asynchronous communication by posting a mess...
 

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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.