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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
26
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
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.4%, up from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.3%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for asynchronous communication, enabling services to operate independently but issues with stability
The feature of ActiveMQ which I feel is good is its ability to have DLP, the later queues. If something goes wrong with the platform, it retries. Even if it fails, it goes to DLP, and later we can rescan the same event for processing. The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"It provides the best support services."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"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."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"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."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"The solution is easy to scale and cost-effective."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are AWS Lambda services, ECS, and QuickSight reports, which are beneficial for data analysis."
"I think the tool is very reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"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

"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."
"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."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"There are some stability issues."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"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."
"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."
"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."
"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days."
"Sending or receiving messages takes some time, and it could be quicker."
"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"I think the software is free."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"We use the open-source version."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"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 rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"It's quite expensive."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable 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."
"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
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
We need to address the non-deterministic load issues. Sometimes, ActiveMQ either restarts automatically or goes into ActiveMQ mode, causing interruptions. We need to enhance stability and improve t...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
We have a digital ID platform that uses various services running on Kafka. There are two main endpoints where services interact with external services. These include an automatic biometric service ...
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...
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...
 

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: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.