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 26.2% mindshare in the category. Apache Kafka is ranked #8 in SA , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 2.4% 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

7,395 Views
4,507 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Read 86 Apache Kafka reviews

1,066 Views
803 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Apache Kafka

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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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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

7.0

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 26.2%, up 20.9% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 2.4% mindshare, up 2.0% 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 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."

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

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."

"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."

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."

"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."

More ActiveMQ pros

"All the features of Apache Kafka are valuable, I cannot single out one feature."

"Kafka makes data streaming asynchronous and decouples the reliance of events on consumers."

"As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable...The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems."

"We get amazing throughput. We don't get any delay."

"Good horizontal scaling and design."

"The high availability is valuable. It is robust, and we can rely on it for a huge amount of data."

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

"One of the most valuable features I have found is Kafka Connect."

More Apache Kafka pros

Cons

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

"There are some stability issues."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."

More ActiveMQ cons

"Kafka requires non-trivial expertise with DevOps to deploy in production at scale. The organization needs to understand ZooKeeper and Kafka and should consider using additional tools, such as MirrorMaker, so that the organization can survive an availability zone or a region going down."

"I would like to see monitoring service tools."

"Apache Kafka can improve by providing a UI for monitoring. There are third-party tools that can do it, but it would be nice if it was already embedded within Apache Kafka."

"Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring."

"The management tool could be improved."

"The initial setup and deployment could be less complex."

"Apache Kafka can improve by adding a feature out of the box which allows it to deliver only one message."

"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

"We use the open-source version."

"I think the software is free."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

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

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

"It’s open source, ergo free."

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

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"This is an open-source version."

"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."

"The solution is open source; it's free to use."

"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."

"We use the free version."

"The solution is open source."

"It is open source software."

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."

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

11%

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?

The open-source version of Apache Kafka results in minimal costs, mainly linked to accessing documentation and limited support. Enterprises usually opt for the more cost-effective open-source edition.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 52% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 15% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 6% of the time

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka

Compared 19% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 15% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 15% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Event Streams vs Apache Kafka

Compared 3% of the time

More Apache Kafka Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

March 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

March 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

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