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Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Amazon SQS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (3rd)
Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Amazon SQS and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Amazon SQS is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 8.5%, down 11.6% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 2.5% mindshare, up 2.0% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"The dead-letter queue is very helpful in maintaining the messages that come into the queue."
"The most valuable features include the ability to handle a huge number of messages and the presence of a dead letter queue."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
"I like how we can subscribe to multiple topics in Amazon SQS. It's also much simpler and quicker to set up than other solutions. It also supports patterns like Kafka and RapidMQ's fan-out pattern but with easier implementation."
"It's very quick and easy to build or set up Amazon SQS."
"All Amazon Web Services resources are easy to configure."
"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"I have seen a return on investment with this solution."
"Apache Kafka is actually a distributed commit log. That is different than most messaging and queuing systems before it."
"The solution is very scalable. We started with a cluster of three and then scaled it to seven."
"The most valuable feature of Kafka is the Kafka Streams client."
"I use it for real-time processing workloads. So, in some instances, it's like IoT data. We need to put it into a data lake."
"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."
"The convenience in setting up after major problems like data center blackouts is a notable feature."
"It's very easy to keep to install and it's pretty stable."
 

Cons

"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."
"The initial setup of Amazon SQS is in the middle range of difficulty. You need to learn Amazon AWS and know how to navigate, create resources, and structures, and provide rules."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, especially for the FIFO model."
"There is room for improvement in handling large-scale data."
"The cost became an issue, leading us to consider other solutions."
"Sometimes, we have to switch to another component similar to SQS because the patching tool for SQS is relatively slow for us."
"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."
"Kafka has a lot of monitors, but sometimes it's most important to just have a simple monitor."
"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."
"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)."
"Managing Apache Kafka can be a challenge, but there are solutions. I used the newest release, as it seems they have removed Zookeeper, which should make it easier. Confluent provides a fully managed Kafka platform, in which the cluster does not need to be managed."
"There is a lot of information available for the solution and it can be overwhelming to sort through."
"Pulsar gives more scalability to an even grouping, but Apache Kafka is used more if you want to send something in a time series-based. If this does not matter to you then Pulsar could be more customizable. Apache Kafka is nothing but a streaming system with local storage."
"More Windows support, I believe, is one area where it can improve."
"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 rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"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."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."
"Amazon SQS offers a generous free tier, beyond which it remains very cost-effective. The cost per million messages is less than a dollar, making it an economical choice."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"Apache Kafka is free."
"The solution is open source."
"The solution is free, it is open-source."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"It's quite affordable considering the value it provides."
"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."
"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."
"It is open source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
AWS provides another messaging service, which is fine for certain purposes. SQS meets the cloud messaging workload requirements. However, combining the features of both products could be an easier ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I primarily use SQL Server for messaging services, and I need to offer loose couplings. SQS is handy for offloading non-urgent tasks that can be reverted later. I use it as a queue management servi...
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

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SQS vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
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