Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon SQS vs IBM MQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 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
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
164
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.5%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 25.6%, up from 20.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

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.
SelvaKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method
We find it scalable for internal applications, but not so much for external integrations. It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area. IBM MQ needs to improve the UI for quicker logging. Users should also have a lot more control over logging, with a dashboard-like interface. That's something they should definitely work on.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate that Amazon SQS is fully integrated with Amazon and can be accessed through normal functions or serverless functions, making it very user-friendly. Additionally, the features are comparable to those of other solutions."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"The solution is easy to scale and cost-effective."
"We use Amazon SQS for notifying, queuing servers, queuing messages, and notifying the people for alerting systems."
"All Amazon Web Services resources are easy to configure."
"We use SNS as the publisher, and our procurement service subscribes to those events using SQS. In the past, we relied on time-based or batch-based processes to send data between services on-premises. With SQS, we can trigger actions based on real-time changes in business processes, improving reliability."
"It is stable and scalable."
"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."
"The most valuable features are RDQM and queue sharing."
"Integrates between distributed systems: For example, it can help integrate processing between mainframe, client-server, web-based applications by integrating the messages, supporting Service Oriented Architecture."
"The first things are its simplicity and its robustness. Compared to any other product, it's the most robust I've worked with. And it's extremely easy to manage."
"I haven't seen any issues with respect to the message loss."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Combined with IBM MQ, this product is our primary data store."
"IBM MQ is the right choice because of the stability and the performance. And from the support perspective, it's enough to have a really small team."
"The methodology and the way in which the platform has been produced as a standard is most valuable. There are so many different versions of it now, but the actual basic functionality and the simplicity of it have made it far easier to be implemented in so many different instances. When I worked with the OS/2 or PS/2 machine environment, the messaging mechanisms were based upon IBM MQ. It is so versatile, which is the main reason that I'm a fan of it."
 

Cons

"Support could be improved."
"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"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."
"Sometimes, we have to switch to another component similar to SQS because the patching tool for SQS is relatively slow for us."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"The search should be more user-friendly, allowing me to search for a longer period of time and return results faster."
"Amazon SQS is costly. I think there could be improvements in how it facilitates comparisons between different AWS products. A calculator would be helpful. The calculator for Kafka is based on factors like throughput or storage used in the last month. In contrast, the calculator for Amazon SQS is based on the number of transactions processed. These different approaches make it challenging to compare them directly. I suggest AWS provide a straightforward calculator where I can input one aspect, and it calculates costs for multiple solutions."
"IBM MQ is not very user-friendly."
"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."
"the level of training as well as product marketing for this product are not that great. You rarely find a good training institute that provides training. Many of the architects in several organization are neither aware of the product nor interested in using it. IBM should provide good training on products like this."
"It would be nice if we could use the cluster facilities because we are doing active/passive configuration use."
"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."
"There are many complications with IBM MQ servers."
"Everything in the solution could be simplified a little. We have trouble with the configuration and cost which is mostly an internal issue, but nevertheless, the errors do come up when there are configuration changes across a specific version. We have slightly different versions, which may have slightly different configurations which cause issues."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"It's quite expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"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."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"I think IBM needs to look at its pricing. The prices of IBM products should be simple. The old way of pricing should now be moving on to the cloud to be pay as you go, a plan-based kind of pricing."
"It is a very expensive product compared to the open source products in the market."
"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."
"IBM MQ is expensive and they charge based on the CPU."
"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."
"The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
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 is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
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...
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SQS vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.