ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS comparison

Apache and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Apache is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.0. Apache holds a 26.2% mindshare in MQ, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

6,175 Views
5,681 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon SQS

Read 30 Amazon SQS reviews

3,317 Views
1,824 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Amazon SQS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS are message broker solutions. Amazon SQS may have the upper hand in scalability and reliability, making it a potentially better choice based on data comparisons.

Features: ActiveMQ supports multiple protocols, advanced message queuing, and can be deployed on-premises. Amazon SQS integrates seamlessly with AWS, supports high scalability, and provides reliable message delivery.

Room for Improvement: ActiveMQ could benefit from smoother deployment and enhanced customer support. Amazon SQS might improve its flexibility and customization options for users unfamiliar with AWS.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ActiveMQ's deployment is customizable but requires manual setup, while Amazon SQS offers smoother deployment through AWS, requiring less hands-on management and providing robust customer support.

Pricing and ROI: ActiveMQ's open-source nature lowers setup costs, offering good ROI for technical users. Amazon SQS uses a pay-as-you-go model, providing predictable costs that scale with usage for efficient ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

July 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon SQS

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.2%, up from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.1%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu

Technical Director at NIDP

Efficient data flow management with high performance and occasional stability improvements

For high traffic volumes where management time on ActiveMQ is minimal and where the rate of flow from the provider is slower than from the consumer, ActiveMQ offers the highest performance based on our experience. It has been efficient for data flow control between two endpoints, despite occasional unexpected glitches. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

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Hari Prakash Pokala

Senior Java Engineer at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Valuable AWS services enhance data analysis yet could benefit from flexible data streams

I am using multiple services such as AWS Lambda, S3, EC2, ECS, and the SNS SQS services, along with QuickSight reports and some of the VPC concepts. We have an email notification system integrated with Spring Branch. Once a batch job completes, SNS and SQS trigger events, sending notification…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."

"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."

"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."

"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."

More ActiveMQ pros

"One of the most valuable features of Amazon SQS is its event-driven invocation."

"We use the tool in interface integrations."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."

"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."

"One of the useful features is the ability to schedule a call after a certain number of messages accumulate in the container. For example, if there are ten messages in the container, you can perform a specific action."

"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."

"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."

"It's very quick and easy to build or set up Amazon SQS."

More Amazon SQS pros

Cons

"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."

"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."

"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."

"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."

"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."

"There are some stability issues."

More ActiveMQ cons

"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."

"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."

"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."

"For Amazon SQS, in particular, I think AWS Management Console has shortcomings. AWS Management Console should be a better pluggable option to help users with some integrations."

"The search should be more user-friendly, allowing me to search for a longer period of time and return results faster."

"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."

"Sending or receiving messages takes some time, and it could be quicker."

"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."

More Amazon SQS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no fees because it is open-source."

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."

"I think the software is free."

"We use the open-source version."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."

More ActiveMQ 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."

"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 more affordable compared to other solutions."

"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."

"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."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."

"It's quite expensive."

More Amazon SQS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon SQS?

It is stable and scalable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?

The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days. It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for lo...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?

I primarily use Amazon SQS ( /products/amazon-sqs-reviews ) for asynchronous messaging. It is part of our distributed system design, where we use it for asynchronous communication by posting a mess...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 50% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Compared 4% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 4% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs Amazon SQS

Compared 18% of the time

Redis vs Amazon SQS

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Amazon SQS

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 11% of the time

More Amazon SQS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

August 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SQS

August 2025

Download Amazon SQS product report

Also Known As

AMQ

No data available

Overview

Apache ActiveMQ is the most popular and powerful open source messaging and Integration Patterns server.

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License

Apache

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS eliminates the complexity and overhead associated with managing and operating message oriented middleware, and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work. Using SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components at any volume, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available. Get started with SQS in minutes using the AWS console, Command Line Interface or SDK of your choice, and three simple commands.

SQS offers two types of message queues. Standard queues offer maximum throughput, best-effort ordering, and at-least-once delivery. SQS FIFO queues are designed to guarantee that messages are processed exactly once, in the exact order that they are sent.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc.

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

July 2025

Free Report: ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

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