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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 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

"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"It's a very easy-to-use product, documentation is sufficient, and anyone with a bit of knowledge about technology, like Java, can quickly set it up and it could be up and running in minutes."
"The main function I find valuable in ActiveMQ is facilitating message transfer within the client's internal network. ActiveMQ handles the message transfer from the internal network to the cloud. Regarding multi-protocols, we use different approaches based on client capabilities. Some clients connect for real-time data transfer, using database queries for periodic updates every ten minutes. We collect data from multiple clients, ensuring we get real-time sensor values where possible and periodic updates for others."
"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"ActiveMQ is a good solution; it is low cost, high performance, and scalable."
"Loose coupling of components by the use of messaging queues allows for completely separate component life cycles and ownership within the organization."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"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."
"This is a free-to-use solution for somebody who wants to do 1 million requests, and this is sufficient for any application at a small organization."
"We use the tool in interface integrations."
"The solution is simple to use, and I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"The most valuable features of the solution are AWS Lambda services, ECS, and QuickSight reports, which are beneficial for data analysis."
"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 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."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"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 primary issue was the increase in costs due to frequent polling for messages."
"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."
"The support hasn't been ideal. It could be better."
"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."
"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."
"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."
"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."
"The current visibility timeout of five minutes is okay. However, I'd like to explore the possibility of extending it for specific use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"I think the software is free."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"We use the open-source version."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"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."
"It's quite expensive."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"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 more affordable compared to other solutions."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
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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.