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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 January 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 7.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ActiveMQ22.4%
Amazon SQS7.8%
Other69.8%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

MD
Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction
With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.
reviewer2281650 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Efficient data retention and high scalability drive significant productivity improvements
The features of Amazon SQS that I find most valuable include its data retention capabilities and message durability. The retention of data is crucial, as other systems like RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ require management. Furthermore, if there's a failure in the system after consuming a message, SQS's settings ensure the message is not deleted until confirmation. Additionally, generating FIFO and standard queues based on use cases is a helpful feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"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 ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"With SQS, we can trigger events in various cloud environments. It offers numerous benefits for us."
"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."
"The solution is easy to scale and cost-effective."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components."
"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."
"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
 

Cons

"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"The UI. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. The UI is too simple. Sometimes you wanna see the messages coming to the queue, and you have to refresh the dashboard, the console of the product."
"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."
"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"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 like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases."
"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."
"As a company that uses IBM solutions, it's difficult to compare Amazon SQS to other solutions. We have been using IBM solutions for a long time and they are very mature in integration and queuing. In my role as an integration manager, I can say that Amazon SQS is designed primarily for use within the Amazon ecosystem and does not have the same level of functionality as IBM MQ or other similar products. It has limited connectivity options and does not easily integrate with legacy systems."
"The tool needs improvement in user-friendliness and discoverability."
"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."
"There are some issues with SQS's transaction queue regarding knowing if something has been received."
"The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days."
"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"We use the open-source version."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"I think the software is free."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point 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."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 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?
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 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.
 

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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.