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ActiveMQ vs Redis 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)
Redis
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (6th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (2nd), AI Software Development (12th)
 

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
Caching has accelerated complex workflows and delivers low latency for high-traffic microservices
A few features of Redis that I use on a day-to-day basis and feel are among the best are extremely low latency and high throughput. Since Redis is in-memory, it makes it ideal for cases such as caching and rate limiting where response time is critical. TTL expiry support is very useful in Redis as it allows me to automatically evict stale data without manual cleanup, which is something I use heavily in my caching strategy. Another point I can mention is that the rich data structures such as strings, hashes, and even sorted sets are very powerful. I have used strings for caching responses and counters, whereas I have used hashes for storing structured objects. One more feature I can tell you about is atomic operations. Redis guarantees atomicity for operations such as incrementing a counter, which is very useful for rate limiting and avoiding race conditions in distributed systems. Finally, I want to emphasize that Redis is easy to scale and integrate, whether through clustering or using a distributed cache across microservices. Redis has impacted my organization positively by providing default support that is very useful. For metrics, in one of my core systems, introducing Redis as a distributed cache helped me achieve around an 80% cache hit rate, which reduced repeated downstream services. Real API latency also improved from around two seconds to approximately 450 milliseconds for P99. It also helped reduce the load on dependent services and databases, which improved overall system reliability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a very easy-to-use product, documentation is sufficient, and anyone with a bit of knowledge about technology, like Java, can quickly set it up and it could be up and running in minutes."
"Loose coupling of components by the use of messaging queues allows for completely separate component life cycles and ownership within the organization."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"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."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"Depending on the problem, AMQ resolved nearly everything."
"The best thing about Redis is its ability to handle large amounts of data without frequently hitting the database. You can store data in temporary memory, especially for high-volume data."
"Redis is good for distributed caching management."
"Overall, I want to say that Redis truly adds value, especially for low latency and high throughput use cases."
"The solution is fast, provides good performance, and is not too expensive."
"It makes operations more efficient. The information processing is very fast, and very responsive. It's all about the technology."
"The ability to fetch and save data quickly is valuable."
"What I like best about Redis is its fast and easy use. It has interesting algorithms like HyperLogLog and provides useful features. It's also good for implementing scalable rate limiting."
"The product offers fast access to my database."
 

Cons

"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."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"I do not recommend ActiveMQ over Apache Kafka partly because I don't know who provides support for the solution."
"I would like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases."
"Configuring ActiveMQ brokers for working in a cluster is difficult and has many constraints."
"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."
"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."
"Because this is an open-source project, there is no support. We don't have any help or anything like that."
"Redis presents a single point of failure and lacks fault tolerance."
"Managing memory efficiently and troubleshooting issues can sometimes require additional tooling, so these areas can also be improved."
"In future releases, I would like Redis to provide its users with an option like schema validation. Currently, the solution lacks to offer such functionality."
"Sometimes, we use Redis as a cluster, and the clusters can sometimes suffer some issues and bring some downtime to your application."
"The tool should improve by increasing its size limits and handling dynamic data better. We use the client ID or associate it with a key for static content. The solution will not be easy for a beginner. Unless you understand SQL data, it will be difficult to understand and use Redis. It also needs to be user-friendly."
"There is a lack of documentation on the scalability of the solution."
"The only thing is the lack of a GUI application. There was a time when we needed to resolve an issue in production. If we had a GUI, it would have been easier."
"It's actually quite expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"I think the software is free."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"Redis is an open-source solution. There are not any hidden fees."
"Redis is an open-source product."
"We saw an ROI. It made the processing of our transactions faster."
"Redis is not an overpriced solution."
"The tool is open-source. There are no additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

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 needs improvement with Redis?
Overall, Redis is a powerful and reliable tool, but there are a few areas for improvement. One limitation is that Redis is memory-based, so scaling can become expensive compared to disk-based syste...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
My main use case for Redis is caching frequently accessed data to improve performance and reduce database load. For example, I cache API responses and user-related data so that repeated requests ca...
What advice do you have for others considering Redis?
My main advice for those looking into using Redis is to focus on the use case; Redis excels where low latency is critical, such as caching, session management, or real-time features, rather than us...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
Redis Enterprise
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.