ActiveMQ vs Apache Kafka comparison

The compared ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka solutions aren't in the same category. ActiveMQ is ranked #2 in MQ , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 26.4% mindshare in the category. Apache Kafka is ranked #8 in SA , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of ActiveMQ users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Apache Kafka users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 26 ActiveMQ reviews

6,648 Views
4,133 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Read 87 Apache Kafka reviews

899 Views
721 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Apache Kafka

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

May 2024

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Helped 850,671 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (2nd)

Apache Kafka

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (8th)

Mindshare comparison

ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ActiveMQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 26.4%, up 21.8% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 2.8% mindshare, up 1.9% since last year.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Streaming Analytics

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability

I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."

"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."

"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."

"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

"The main function I find valuable in ActiveMQ is facilitating message transfer within the client's internal network. ActiveMQ handles the message transfer from the internal network to the cloud. Regarding multi-protocols, we use different approaches based on client capabilities. Some clients connect for real-time data transfer, using database queries for periodic updates every ten minutes. We collect data from multiple clients, ensuring we get real-time sensor values where possible and periodic updates for others."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."

"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."

More ActiveMQ pros

"It is a stable solution...A lot of my experience indicates that Apache Kafka is scalable."

"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."

"The stream processing is a very valuable aspect of the solution for us."

"Apache Kafka is very fast and stable."

"The valuable features are the group community and support."

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"The use of Kafka's logging mechanism has been extremely beneficial for us, as it allows us to sequence messages, track pointers, and manage memory without having to create multiple copies."

More Apache Kafka pros

Cons

"From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale."

"For additional functionality, I suggest making it easier to install and monitor the queues, topics, broker status, publisher status, and consumer status. Improved monitoring tools would help avoid needing to manually access the server for monitoring purposes."

"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."

"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."

"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."

"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

"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."

More ActiveMQ cons

"They need to have a proper portal to do everything because, at this moment, Kafka is lagging in this regard."

"Maintaining and configuring Apache Kafka can be challenging, especially when you want to fine-tune its behavior."

"The graphical user environment is currently lacking."

"Kafka is complex and there is a little bit of a learning curve."

"There are some latency problems with Kafka."

"Stability of the API and the technical support could be improved."

"The solution can improve by having automation for developers. We have done many manual calculations and it has been difficult but if it was automated it would be much better."

"The interface has room for improvement, and there is a steep learning curve for Hadoop integration. It was a struggle learning to send from Hadoop to Kafka. In future releases, I'd like to see improvements in ETL functionality and Hadoop integration."

More Apache Kafka cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."

"There are no fees because it is open-source."

"We use the open-source version."

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."

"It is open source software."

"The solution is free, it is open-source."

"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."

"This is an open-source version."

"The cost can vary depending on the provider and the specific flavor or version you use. I'm not very knowledgeable about the pricing details."

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."

"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."

More Apache Kafka pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

34%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?

Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...

See all answers

What do you like most about Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?

Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 53% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Compared 2% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Red Hat AMQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka

Compared 15% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 14% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 13% of the time

Databricks vs Apache Kafka

Compared 2% of the time

More Apache Kafka Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

May 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

May 2025

Download Apache Kafka product report

Also Known As

AMQ

No data available

Overview

Apache ActiveMQ is the most popular and powerful open source messaging and Integration Patterns server.

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License

Apache

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed streaming platform that serves as a central hub for handling real-time data streams. It allows efficient publishing, subscribing, and processing of data from various sources like applications, servers, and sensors.

Kafka's core benefits include high scalability for big data pipelines, fault tolerance ensuring continuous operation despite node failures, low latency for real-time applications, and decoupling of data producers from consumers.

Key features include topics for organizing data streams, producers for publishing data, consumers for subscribing to data, brokers for managing clusters, and connectors for easy integration with various data sources.

Large organizations use Kafka for real-time analytics, log aggregation, fraud detection, IoT data processing, and facilitating communication between microservices.

Apache

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc.

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

May 2024

Free Report: ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.

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