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IBM MQ vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 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

IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
164
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
Red Hat AMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 25.6%, up from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat AMQ is 9.4%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

SelvaKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to batch metadata transfers between systems that support MQ as the communication method
We find it scalable for internal applications, but not so much for external integrations. It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area. IBM MQ needs to improve the UI for quicker logging. Users should also have a lot more control over logging, with a dashboard-like interface. That's something they should definitely work on.
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

"The reliability of the queuing is the most valuable feature."
"It's ability to scale, it's ability to do guaranteed delivery and it's ability to do point-to-point of what we subscribe are the most valuable features."
"We use our routing feature when the request is coming from the business application. The request goes to the distributive side and it is routed to the right claim instance."
"Has helped integrate between applications, reduce rework, and costs by reusing working components of existing applications."
"It also has a backup queue concept and topics, features that I have not seen anywhere else. I like these features very much."
"We like IBM MQ for our synchronous communications and transactional applications that require a lot of CPS."
"This product has good security."
"We have found the MQ messaging topologies valuable."
"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."
"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."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"IBM MQ is not very user-friendly."
"We have had scalability issues with some projects in the past."
"What could be improved is the high-availability. The way MQ works is that it separates the high-availability from the workload balance. The scalability should be easier. If something happens so that the messages are not available on each node, scalability is only possible for the workload balance."
"The solution isn't free. There are other solutions, like RabbitMQ, which are open source and absolutely free to use. It's one reason we are moving away from IBM."
"In IBM MQ, the channel connection is an area where my company faces some limitations. At times, we hit limitations on the connection, meaning the connection is fully occupied."
"The product does not allow users to access data from API or external networks since it can only be used in a closed network, making it an area where improvements are required."
"You should be able to increase the message size. It should be dynamic. Each queue has a limitation of 5,000."
"If they could come up with monitoring dashboards that would be good. We are using external monitoring tools, apart from our IBM MQ, to monitor IBM MQ. If we could get monitoring tools or dashboards to keep everything simple for the user to understand, that would be good."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."
"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 several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"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."
"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."
"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for IBM MQ is commercial and not cheap. You get a multi-platform solution, which is important because it lets you connect systems on mainframes, personal solutions, Unix, Linux, etc."
"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."
"There is a different platform price between Windows, z/OS, and iSeries."
"It is a licensed product. As compared to an open-source solution, such as RabbitMQ, it is obviously costly. If you're using IBM Message Broker, which is a licensed product, IBM MQ is included in the same license. You don't have to pay separately for IBM MQ. The license cost of IBM MQ is lesser than IBM Message Broker."
"IBM's licensing model seems more reasonable than some competitors. They charge based on usage, which is good."
"IBM is expensive."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"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
38%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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...
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

WebSphere MQ
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. Red Hat AMQ and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.