No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS 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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon SQS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 19.8%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 6.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ19.8%
Amazon SQS6.2%
Other74.0%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

NS
Sr. Manager - Digital at IndiGo
Offers diverse messaging protocols and excellent cloud support
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ The features of ActiveMQ and WebSphere MQ fundamentally do the same thing. From my experience, I prefer WebSphere MQ. Both are very sturdy solutions; there is no doubt. Both are sturdy and…
Roberto Costa - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
Facilitates seamless queue creation and management for efficient application decoupling
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage Amazon SQS is a simple service to use. If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"The installation was straightforward."
"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."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"It provides the best support services."
"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"There is a vibrant community, and it is one of the strongest points of this product. We always get answers to our problems. So, my experience with the community support has been good."
"With SQS, we can trigger events in various cloud environments. It offers numerous benefits for us."
"The most valuable features of the solution are AWS Lambda services, ECS, and QuickSight reports, which are beneficial for data analysis."
"The migration to the cloud has satisfied our students, staff, and finance department, with a reduced responsibility."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"All Amazon Web Services resources are easy to configure."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"We used SQS for the Kapolei system to ensure that certain tasks were executed precisely once. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) capability was a great feature for us. Additionally, its redundancy out of the box meant we didn't have to worry about missing messages. It provided peace of mind and automatically instilled trust, relieving us of any concerns."
"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."
 

Cons

"Apache ActiveMQ needs some improvement playing with multi-platform message clients."
"We ran into various stability problems with our implementations over the years."
"There were stability issues. With a network of brokers, you get a lot of issues, especially if you have the publisher and consumer using the same channel or connection, on different topics and/or queues."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"Even though there is support from many open source communities, there is still weakness in ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration for more complex scenarios."
"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."
"Because this is an open-source project, there is no support. We don't have any help or anything like that."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."
"The search should be more user-friendly, allowing me to search for a longer period of time and return results faster."
"The current visibility timeout of five minutes is okay. However, I'd like to explore the possibility of extending it for specific use cases."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"Sending or receiving messages takes some time, and it could be quicker."
"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."
"Support could be improved."
"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s open source, ergo free."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"I think the software is free."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"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."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"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 is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.
What advice do you have for others considering ActiveMQ?
We have not deployed ActiveMQ's flexible clustering as that requirement is not present for us. We only use active-passive configuration. On a scale of one to ten, I rate ActiveMQ a ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
There is nothing I can remember that I would want as new features for Amazon SQS.
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon SQS?
I would recommend Amazon SQS to other people. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 10.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.