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ActiveMQ vs Apache Kafka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (2nd)
Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ActiveMQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 19.8%, down 26.2% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 3.9% mindshare, up 3.0% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ19.8%
IBM MQ20.7%
VMware Tanzu Data Solutions9.6%
Other49.9%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Kafka3.9%
Apache Flink8.2%
Databricks7.9%
Other80.0%
Streaming Analytics
 

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…
Varuns Ug - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at NIT
Event-driven workflows have improved payment processing and reduced latency across services
One area for improvement in Apache Kafka is operational complexity. Running and maintaining an Apache Kafka cluster at scale involves handling partitions, replications, retention policies, rebalancing, and monitoring, which requires strong expertise. Debugging and observability can be complex in large systems, as troubleshooting issues such as consumer lag, offset management problems, or uneven partition distribution can become challenging. The learning curve is relatively steep, requiring a good understanding of concepts such as partition, consumer group, offset commit, and delivery guarantees to avoid subtle production issues. One area where Apache Kafka could improve is the developer experience around debugging and tracing events end to end. In distributed systems, when an event passes through multiple topics and consumer services, troubleshooting can become time-consuming. Better built-in observability for tracing event flows across services would be very useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"For us, initial setup was VERY easy since we were using the Apache-provided Docker image for ActiveMQ, which alleviates a lot of the traditional pains involved with installing new software."
"It provides the best support services."
"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"Kafka is good, but Kafka as a cloud service is awesome!!"
"Kafka can process messages in real-time, making it useful for applications that require near-instantaneous processing."
"Apache Kafka has improved our organization because it's more reliable than Rabbit."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"I appreciate that Apache Kafka is fast and secure thanks to implementing it with AWS, allowing me to secure it on a high level."
"The solution is stable, and the most fantastic thing about it is its throughput."
"It eases our current data flow and framework."
"Some of the clusters churn millions of records per seconds with ease."
 

Cons

"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 have had problems with the message selector as when the queue size reaches a certain level, the message selector does not have enough time to run and finish before the JMS reply timeout."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"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."
"Another area of improvement is the monitoring console, which is kind of rudimentary."
"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."
"The included admin web app is not sufficient and we ended up disabling it."
"Apache ActiveMQ needs some improvement playing with multi-platform message clients."
"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"The manageability should be improved. There are lots of things we need to manage and it should have a function that enables us to manage them all cohesively."
"While the solution scales well and easily, you need to understand your future needs and prep for the peaks."
"In the data sharing space, the performance of Apache Kafka could be improved. The performance angle is critical, and while it works in milliseconds, the goal is to move towards microseconds."
"The support from Apache Kafka could improve. Their engineers at times do not know what the solutions can do."
"The solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release."
"Kafka 2.0 has been released for over a month, and I wanted to try out the new features. However, the configuration is a little bit complicated: Kafka Broker, Kafka Manager, ZooKeeper Servers, etc."
"It needs a separate cluster and a separate administrator to manage the Kafka cluster, adding an extra cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"I think the software is free."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"We use the open-source version."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution."
"Licensing issues are not applicable. Apache licensing makes it simple with almost zero cost for the software itself."
"It is open source software."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"I rate Apache Kafka's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees for Apache Kafka."
"This is an open-source version."
"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."
"The cost can vary depending on the provider and the specific flavor or version you use. I'm not very knowledgeable about the pricing details."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing 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 Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise51
 

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 are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
From the AWS perspective, the price is on the higher side. However, if you go for Apache Kafka, it is low. From a price perspective, if you are asking about Apache Kafka, I would rate it a nine.
What needs improvement with Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is abundant with features which only an expert-level person will be able to manage due to the high volume and high concurrent expectations. Apache Kafka groups could introduce themes o...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.