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Amazon MQ 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

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

Mindshare comparison

Amazon MQ and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Amazon MQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 5.5%, down 9.4% 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

David Onuh - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides you with a URL where you can either send or retrieve messages
For messaging, we use SQL queues, not MQ queues. When a request comes into our front-end application, we put this message into a queue. The right service picks up a particular message from the queue, performs the operation, and calls the next service. The next service taking that message can either perform services on the message or attach it to a new queue from multiple services. It's as if we have multiple services working hand-in-hand, but we use a queue system to either get or send messages. I only use Amazon MQ for one specific thing. I wouldn't say I've used it extensively to know what is more beneficial. We use the solution to pick out matrices from a particular queue, process the queue, and process the messages they push into something else. It was really fast. One of the good things I love about the solution is that you hardly get two services working on one message. When a subscriber to a queue consumes their message, it's in the queue at a particular moment. All the messages are only visible to the particular subscriber. Suppose ten services are trying to get a message from the queue. Out of the ten, if five pick the same messages, you will get duplicate transactions and weird errors. It does a very good job abstracting that for you, so you don't have to write the logic. Amazon MQ has done all that it was supposed to do. Most of the issues boil down to a skill or a pricing issue. Overall, I rate Amazon MQ ten out of ten.
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."
"We have found Amazon MQ to provide scalability, robustness, and security."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its managed service aspect. It's simple to implement and use. It requires minimal effort to maintain business operations."
"Amazon MQ is a secure solution."
"Amazon MQ is important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."
"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."
"Amazon MQ is managed by AWS and is easy to use."
"Its availability is brilliant."
"It eases our current data flow and framework."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is Kafka Connect."
"The open-source version is relatively straightforward to set up and only takes a few minutes."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"The most valuable features are the stream API, consumer groups, and the way that the scaling takes place."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is the clustering which is very easy to scale and we have multiple servers all over our platforms. It has been useful for stability and performance."
"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."
 

Cons

"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"In community support, especially with distributed systems and integration, there is a need for better system organization."
"Amazon MQ is a good solution for small and medium-sized enterprises. It's open-source software, which means it's cheaper than its competitors."
"The solution needs improvement in the back end and security."
"The product should improve its monitoring capabilities. It needs to improve the pricing also."
"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."
"If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great."
"As an open-source project, Kafka is still fairly young and has not yet built out the stability and features that other open-source projects have acquired over the many years. If done correctly, Kafka can also take over the stream-processing space that technologies such as Apache Storm cover."
"The product is good, but it needs implementation and on-going support. The whole cloud engagement model has made the adoption of Kafka better due to PaaS (Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service by AWS)."
"If the graphical user interface was easier for the Kafka administration it would be much better. Right now, you need to use the program with the command-line interface. If the graphical user interface was easier, it could be a better product."
"The GUI tools for monitoring and support are still very basic and not very rich. There is no help in determining a shard key for performance."
"The support on Apache Kafka could be improved."
"There are some latency problems with Kafka."
"One of the things I am mostly looking for is that once the message is picked up from Kafka, it should not be visible or able to be consumed by other applications, or something along those lines. That feature is not present, but it is not a limitation or anything of the sort; rather, it is a desirable feature. The next release should include a feature that prevents messages from being consumed by other applications once they are picked up by Kafka."
"It's not possible to substitute IBM MQ with Apache Kafka because the JMS part is not very stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"As a client or as an end user, I would say that Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud are cheaper than Amazon MQ."
"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. For on-premise, there is an annual fee, which starts at 60,000 euros, but it is usually higher than 100,000 euros. The cost for a project including the subscription is usually between 100,000 to 200,000 euros. The cost also depends on the level of support. There are two different levels of support."
"Apache Kafka is open-source and can be used free of charge."
"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"It is open source software."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"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."
"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"The solution is open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
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 Amazon MQ?
The tool's most valuable feature is its managed service aspect. It's simple to implement and use. It requires minimal effort to maintain business operations.
What needs improvement with Amazon MQ?
The message queue requires an improvement in the message template MQ link. If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great.
What is your primary use case for Amazon MQ?
We are using Amazon MQ for our AI model. It's used for notifications and other services. We have an application for which Amazon MQ acts as a broker.
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?
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SkipTheDishes, Malmberg, Dealer.com, Bench Accounting
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MQ vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.