ActiveMQ vs IBM MQ comparison

Apache and IBM are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Apache is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Apache holds a 26.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to IBM’s 26.2% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 26 ActiveMQ reviews

6,648 Views
4,133 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Read 169 IBM MQ reviews

6,025 Views
3,999 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

IBM MQ

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

IBM MQ and ActiveMQ are prominent messaging solutions competing in the messaging service domain. IBM MQ holds the upper hand for enterprises needing robust data management, while ActiveMQ offers a cost-effective choice for smaller applications and microservices transitions.

Features: IBM MQ guarantees message delivery and is platform-compatible with robust stability, ideal for large-scale secure data handling. ActiveMQ is highly flexible, supporting multiple messaging protocols and easy deployment in Docker environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM MQ needs cost reduction, better interfaces, and enhanced monitoring. ActiveMQ requires improved stability, simpler clustering, and enhanced monitoring tools to better support implementation scaling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM MQ suits on-premises to hybrid deployments with reliable performance needing minimal support. ActiveMQ is cost-free, fitting on-premises and public cloud usage, popular in test environments and smaller firms for easy adoption.

Pricing and ROI: IBM MQ is expensive but justifies its cost with enterprise-grade capabilities. ActiveMQ is open-source, offering reliable performance without licensing costs at a fraction of IBM MQ's expense.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ

April 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

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM MQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

169

Ranking in other categories

Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)

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 IBM MQ is 26.2%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover

Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot

Feb 13, 2019

What Is The Biggest Difference Between ActiveMQ and IBM MQ?

ActiveMQ offers very high throughput and low latency compared to IBM MQ. ActiveMQ supports standard messaging protocols like AMQP, STOMP, MQTT etc whereas IBM MQ just comply with JMS and its own protocol. IBM MQ Light supports AMQP though. IBM MQ is much preferred in enterprise environment, probably due to the support. Redhat AMQ offers enterprise support on ActiveMQ. AFAIK documentation wise, they are at par. Both support clustering. But only in ActiveMQ real storage of messages in another broker which is less loaded happens. IBM MQ just enables communication between Queue managers. But I would prefer to put a few more options on the table. 1. RabbitMQ - fully compliant with protocols, supports replication and distribution of messages, throughput in tens of thousands 2. Redis - Light weight single threaded server. Supports pub sub messaging and supports HA via sentinel and clustering for distributed messaging 3. Kafka - Preferred mechanism for data streaming. Throughput in millions. 4. ZeroMQ - Brokerless messaging platform. Very high throughput. 5. NanoMsg - Brokerless. Claims to be advanced than ZeroMQ

See all answers

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Md Al-Amin

Senior System Analyst at Thakral

Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer

IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."

"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."

"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."

"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 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."

"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."

More ActiveMQ pros

"The solution is stable."

"Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

"Reliable messaging and throughput are the most valuable."

"This solution has improved and influenced the communication between different applications, then standardized that communication."

"What is quite useful is the asynchronous function which means we don't lose everything in the bank. Although we use a lot of things synchronously, asynch is the best thing so that no banking information is ever lost, even when the network goes down and comes up."

"Using a message queuing solution, we had a banking solution that integrated multiple branches and interbank systems. Different systems for credits, debits, CRM, and others communicated through this message queue solution. It wasn't just about communication; for instance, a CRM application needed to collect information from various banking systems, such as account balances, properties, contracts, and credit cards."

"I like the architecture it provides seamlessly for assured delivery."

"The solution is very easy to work with."

More IBM MQ pros

Cons

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

"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."

"For additional functionality, I suggest making it easier to install and monitor the queues, topics, broker status, publisher status, and consumer status. Improved monitoring tools would help avoid needing to manually access the server for monitoring purposes."

"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."

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

"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."

"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."

"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."

More ActiveMQ cons

"It's not always easy for applications to connect to IBM MQ, but I think it's fine in general."

"There are things within the actual product itself that can be improved, such as limitations on message length, size, etc. There is no standardized message length outside of IBM. Each of the implementations of the MQ series or support of that functionality varies between various suppliers, and because of that, it is very difficult to move from one to the other. We have IBM MQ, but we couldn't use it because the platform that was speaking to MQ didn't support the message length that was standard within IBM MQ. So, we had to use a different product to do exactly the same thing. So, perhaps, there could be more flexibility in the standards around the message queue. If we had been able to increase the message queue size within the IBM MQ implementation, we wouldn't have had to go over to another competing product because the system that was using MQ messaging required the ability to hold messages that were far larger than the IBM MQ standard. So, there could be a bit more flexibility in the structuring. It has as such nothing to do with the IBM implementation of MQ. It is just that the standard that is being put out onto the market doesn't actually stipulate those types of things."

"Should have more integration in the monitoring tools."

"They need to add the ability to send full messages (header + payload) from the MQ Explorer program, not just the payload."

"Support can be better because sometimes we need explanations for some behaviors of the product, and it's not easy to reach the proper person in IBM support."

"I can't say pricing is good."

"It would be an advantage if they can include streaming in IBM MQ, similar to Kafka. Kafka is used mainly for streaming purposes. This feature is clearly lacking in IBM MQ. If they add this feature to IBM MQ, it will have an edge over other products."

"I would like the ability to connect with some of the more recent offerings, such as API Connect; being able to publish our MQ endpoints, the queues, the messaging infrastructure as IT assets."

More IBM MQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

"We use the open-source version."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

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

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

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"The pricing needs improvement."

"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."

"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."

"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."

"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."

"In terms of cost, IBM MQ is slightly on the higher side."

"IBM is expensive."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

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Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover

Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot

Feb 13, 2019

What Is The Biggest Difference Between ActiveMQ and IBM MQ?

See 2 answers

Jack Angoe

Technical Lead at Interface Fintech Ltd

Feb 12, 2019

From my Experience so far i will go for RabbitMQ its rock solid and robust with a simple learning curve. Its free and has great documentation available

Read full answer

Winster Jose

Senior Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Feb 13, 2019

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

34%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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?

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is MQ software?

Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 4% of the time

Apache Kafka vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

Compared 9% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs IBM MQ

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

May 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

May 2025

Download IBM MQ product report

Also Known As

AMQ

WebSphere MQ

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

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

Sample Customers

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

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ

April 2025

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