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 8.5, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Apache holds a 22.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to IBM’s 22.9% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

4,388 Views
4,169 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Read 174 IBM MQ reviews

6,590 Views
4,877 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

IBM MQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

IBM MQ and ActiveMQ are both competitive products in the messaging solutions category. IBM MQ seems to have the upper hand due to its enterprise-level features such as reliability and scalability, making it ideal for high-volume environments.

Features: IBM MQ offers robust features like guaranteed message delivery, comprehensive integration across various platforms, and scalability. ActiveMQ stands out with its multi-protocol support, easy deployment through Docker, and cost-effectiveness, which appeals to smaller or budget-constrained organizations.

Room for Improvement: IBM MQ could benefit from more user feedback on its security enhancements and a more intuitive interface. It also needs better cloud service integration. ActiveMQ requires improvements in clustering setups, documentation, and multi-language client support. It could also enhance its ease-of-configuration and stability in complex scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM MQ excels in hybrid and on-premises deployments, supported by strong technical assistance, despite some concerns about cost and speed. ActiveMQ offers flexibility and cloud deployment ease, but may lack the enterprise-level support seen with IBM MQ.

Pricing and ROI: IBM MQ has higher licensing costs, justified by its reliability and support, suitable for enterprises seeking a long-term ROI. Conversely, ActiveMQ's open-source nature provides a significant cost advantage, appealing to small setups needing cost-effective solutions despite potential support trade-offs.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ

February 2026

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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

IBM MQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

174

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 22.9%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM MQ	22.9%
ActiveMQ	22.4%
Other	54.7%

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

MoumitaDas

Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction

With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. 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 configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.

Read full review

MykolaKuzmenko

SWIFT manager at Raiffeisen Bank Aval

Reliable payment processing is achieved with minimal disruption

Currently, we have some disadvantages; it's a bit difficult to use IBM ID to access support from the IBM site. To get nice support from IBM, we need to use IBM ID, and it's a bit complicated to integrate it with IBM support. 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. They could add some new features into IBM MQ to make it better. A graphical user interface in addition to MQ Explorer could be useful, but we are satisfied with MQ Explorer as well.

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

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

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

"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."

"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."

"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."

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."

"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."

More ActiveMQ pros

"It also has a backup queue concept and topics, features that I have not seen anywhere else. I like these features very much."

"I think the whole product is useful. Their database and all is very good, and the product is fine. The fact that it ensures message delivery is probably the most important thing. I also like that you're able to trace and track everything. If it doesn't arrive at the destination, it will go back to the queue, and no message will be lost."

"I like the MQ's simplicity and rock-solid stability. I've never experienced a failure in two decades caused by the product itself. It has only failed due to human error."

"Technical support is quite helpful."

"The system integration is good."

"IBM MQ has positively impacted my organization by enabling asynchronous processing, which means we do not need to wait for any responses from our downstream systems."

"It improves reliability and guarantees that messages are not lost."

"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."

More IBM MQ pros

Cons

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

"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."

"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."

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

"There are some stability issues."

"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."

"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."

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

More ActiveMQ cons

"You should be able to increase the message size. It should be dynamic. Each queue has a limitation of 5,000."

"It would be great if the dashboard had additional features like a board design."

"I couldn't find a lot of information on the system API side."

"In the next release, I would like for there to be easier monitoring. The UI should be easier for non-technical users to set up appliances and servers."

"With IBM products, there's less marketing. If they do more demos and more seminars on their products, it will be very useful. On a given day. I get seminar invites for many vendors and products, but for IBM, I may get an invite once or twice a year."

"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."

"It is expensive. The cost is high. There should be more improvement in the new age of technologies."

"The pricing needs improvement."

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."

"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."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"You have to license per application installation and if you expand vertically or horizontally, you will be paying for more licenses. The licenses are approximately $10,000 to $15,000 a license, it can get expensive quite quickly."

"The price is high."

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

"Our costs haven't increased but they also have not improved."

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

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

"It is a very expensive product compared to the open source products in the market."

"It's super expensive, so ask them if they can consolidate some other licensing costs. But, IBM is IBM, so I guess we'll pay for it."

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

30%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	17

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	147

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 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 14% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs IBM MQ

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 5% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

January 2026

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

February 2026

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