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Apache Kafka vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
Red Hat AMQ
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Apache Kafka and Red Hat AMQ aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Apache Kafka is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 1.9% compared to last year.
Red Hat AMQ, on the other hand, focuses on Message Queue (MQ) Software, holds 9.6% mindshare, up 8.2% since last year.
Streaming Analytics
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
Sther Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-learn solution that can be used with microservices
We have done around 20 projects in Red Hat AMQ. I have two projects using Red Hat AMQ, and I can share how its scalability has impacted them. In one project, we have a solution for authentication and authorization using SSO. We need to integrate with other systems in two ways. We use Red Hat AMQ for social data, sending messages to other queues, and integrating with business. We have two databases with the same information. The solution is good because it helps us solve problems with messaging. For instance, when messaging doesn't change, we still check the cloud and verify the information. In another project, we have a large banking solution for the Amazon region using Red Hat AMQ for financial transactions. In this solution, business messages are sent, and another system processes them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A great streaming platform."
"The most valuable feature of Kafka is the Kafka Streams client."
"The most valuable features are the stream API, consumer groups, and the way that the scaling takes place."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is Kafka Connect."
"The ability to partition data on Kafka is valuable."
"It is a useful way to maintain messages and to manage offset from our consumers."
"It is the performance that is really meaningful."
"The connectors provided by the solution are valuable."
"This product is well adopted on the OpenShift platform. For organizations like ours that use OpenShift for many of our products, this is a good feature."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"The most valuable feature for us is the operator-based automation that is provided by Streams for infrastructure as well as user and topic management. This saves a lot of time and effort on our part to provide infrastructure. For example, the deployment of infrastructure is reduced from approximately a week to a day."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
"AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination."
"Reliability is the main criterion for selecting this tool for one of the busiest airports in Mumbai."
"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."
"The solution is very lightweight, easy to configure, simple to manage, and robust since it launched."
 

Cons

"would like to see real-time event-based consumption of messages rather than the traditional way through a loop. The traditional messaging system works by listing and looping with a small wait to check to see what the messages are. A push system is where you have something that is ready to receive a message and when the message comes in and hits the partition, it goes straight to the consumer versus the consumer having to pull. I believe this consumer approach is something they are working on and may come in an upcoming release. However, that is message consumption versus message listening."
"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."
"Observability could be improved."
"The interface has room for improvement, and there is a steep learning curve for Hadoop integration. It was a struggle learning to send from Hadoop to Kafka. In future releases, I'd like to see improvements in ETL functionality and Hadoop integration."
"The support on Apache Kafka could be improved."
"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."
"The GUI tools for monitoring and support are still very basic and not very rich. There is no help in determining a shard key for performance."
"There are some latency problems with Kafka."
"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."
"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"The challenge is the multiple components it has. This brings a higher complexity compared to IBM MQ, which is a single complete unit."
"There are some aspects of the monitoring that could be improved on. There is a tool that is somewhat connected to Kafka called Service Registry. This is a product by Red Hat that I would like to see integrated more tightly."
"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"This is an open-source solution and is free to use."
"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. For on-premise, there is an annual fee, which starts at 60,000 euros, but it is usually higher than 100,000 euros. The cost for a project including the subscription is usually between 100,000 to 200,000 euros. The cost also depends on the level of support. There are two different levels of support."
"This is an open-source version."
"The solution is open source."
"The price of the solution is low."
"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
"The solution is open-source."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
What do you like most about Red Hat AMQ?
AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination.
What needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The product needs to improve its documentation and training.
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
We just started working with Red Hat AMQ. We selected it as the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) platform for a new airport project. I manage the entire Master System Integration (MSI) project for one ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Red Hat AMQ and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
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