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ActiveMQ vs Apache Kafka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
5.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (2nd)
Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (7th)
 

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 31.8%, up 25.2% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 0.4% mindshare, up 0.0% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data flow management with high performance and occasional stability improvements
For high traffic volumes where management time on ActiveMQ is minimal and where the rate of flow from the provider is slower than from the consumer, ActiveMQ offers the highest performance based on our experience. It has been efficient for data flow control between two endpoints, despite occasional unexpected glitches. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
Significant cost savings with real-time processing and fast recovery
We use Kafka for a stage event-driven process from a process perspective. Our platform is an ID platform, so after registration data is received, it has to be stored from various registration locations. The process includes stages like quality checking, consistency, format, biometric data checking…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"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 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."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"Kafka's most valuable feature is its user-friendliness."
"Its availability is brilliant."
"With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions."
"The convenience in setting up after major problems like data center blackouts is a notable feature."
"The high availability is valuable. It is robust, and we can rely on it for a huge amount of data."
"Apache Kafka's most valuable features include clustering and sharding...It is a pretty stable solution."
"It seemed pretty stable and didn't have any issues at all."
"The publisher-subscriber pattern and low latency are also essential features that greatly piqued my interest."
 

Cons

"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"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 rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"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."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"Observability could be improved."
"Some vendors don't offer extra features for monitoring."
"The solution can improve its cloud support."
"Kafka is a nightmare to administer."
"Data pulling and restart ability need improving."
"The manageability should be improved. There are lots of things we need to manage and it should have a function that enables us to manage them all cohesively."
"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."
"Kafka does not provide control over the message queue, so we do not know whether we are experiencing lost or duplicate messages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the software is free."
"We use the open-source version."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"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."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
"Apache Kafka is an open-sourced solution. There are fees if you want the support, and I would recommend it for enterprises. There are annual subscriptions available."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."
"The price of the solution is low."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"It's quite affordable considering the value it provides."
"Apache Kafka is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
 

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 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...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
We use Apache Kafka, which is open-source, so we don't have fees. I can't comment on ownership costs as I am not responsible for that domain.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
830,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.