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IBM MQ vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 21.4%, down from 24.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat AMQ is 5.2%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ21.4%
Red Hat AMQ5.2%
Other73.4%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas Krishnamsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, At Tiaa Senior Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Asynchronous messaging has streamlined workflow triggers and supports reliable session rollbacks
The best features IBM MQ offers are the topic and subscription, as well as the IBM MQ session and message rollbacks, especially for JMS integration. IBM MQ serves as the underlying foundation for our JMS messages. 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.
SachinJain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Specialist at Intuitive Technology Partners
Efficiently manages high availability and fault tolerance for critical systems with user-friendly management features
I have experience with features such as message persistence and fault tolerance because I configured high availability and fault tolerance for the client environment, including active-active and active-passive configurations. I mainly prefer active-active. I created a security feature for user authentication and authorization in Red Hat AMQ using vault. When you enable the vault, then your whole Red Hat AMQ becomes more secure. Management is straightforward. I configured it and created documentation. The operations team takes care of the operation part. I educate them on how to manage access, so they can easily add new people who join the company or manage the people who leave. The benefits of using Red Hat AMQ include easy configuration and monitoring. On the portal, I can monitor how many packets or alerts have been generated or sent to the end user via Red Hat AMQ along with messages or emails. It also shows utilization in the tool. These features also come with other AMQs such as Amazon and IBM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are some parts of the business side that couldn't be done without it; it's an integral part."
"We have stability in our environment because of the product, as we can keep adding solutions to the mixture and it still performs as is, providing a more stable process."
"The most valuable feature is the interaction within the system."
"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."
"From the infrastructure point of view, it's a great improvement and it's more flexible to the latest hardware."
"I'd consider MQ one of the simplest products to use."
"If you want to keep your data safe, I would definitely recommend using IBM MQ."
"The reliability is a benefit."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"The solution is very lightweight, easy to configure, simple to manage, and robust since it launched."
"From the functionality perspective, 3scale provides a very comparable, if not the same feature set as any leader in the market for API management and the gateway perspective, but with a fraction of the price."
"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."
"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."
"The self-service aspect is very important for us, and AMQ Streams has enabled us to deliver new services faster, going from days to hours."
 

Cons

"It's been expensive to keep going the way we're going, and the turnaround is a bit slow, slower than we want."
"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."
"If we have IBM MQ or one of the applications go down, our entire plant is down. Then sometimes, it's 2-3 hours or something before someone calls us back."
"IBM is expensive."
"IBM support team is really only concerned with the IBM cloud. They're not supporting any other cloud platforms or suggestions."
"The user interface should be enhanced to include more monitoring features and other metrics. The metrics should include not only those from the IBM MQ point of view but also CPU and memory utilization."
"It is scalable, but not easily."
"It needs a User Interface which is better than the aging MQ Explorer. The existing solution MQ Explorer is outdated."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"This solution is completely unstable. We lose messages."
"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."
"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."
"The areas for improvement include cost, which is a primary concern."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 MQ appliance has pricing options, but they are costly."
"The pricing needs improvement."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
"IBM MQ is expensive and they charge based on the CPU."
"This solution requires a license and we have purchased an enterprise license."
"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."
"To implement such an IBM solution, a company has to pay a lot in term of licensing and consultancy. A pricing model might be a better option."
"The solution is open-source."
"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."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
 

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 needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The areas for improvement include cost, which is a primary concern. The deployment process is simple, but the cost is very important. Additionally, the management portal should be more user-friendl...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
For use cases for Red Hat AMQ, let's take banking purposes. This depends upon the firm or the service or product company. For example, let's take HDFC Bank or any other bank. Whenever a customer de...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat AMQ?
I work primarily with Red Hat. For IBM, I have worked with their channel partner, not directly with IBM. For Amazon, I work with partners only. I am working with one company as a consultant. I also...
 

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: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.