IBM MQ vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while Red Hat is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. IBM holds a 22.9% mindshare in MQ, compared to Red Hat’s 8.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

IBM MQ

Read 174 IBM MQ reviews

6,590 Views
4,877 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Red Hat AMQ

Read 10 Red Hat AMQ reviews

1,991 Views
1,434 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Red Hat AMQ

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

IBM MQ and Red Hat AMQ compete in the enterprise messaging solutions category, providing reliable messaging services. IBM MQ appears to hold the upper hand due to its strong emphasis on stability and security, key factors for enterprise-level deployments.

Features: IBM MQ is renowned for its reliability and robust data transfer capacities. It offers high throughput with assured delivery and stands out for its scalability and data security. Red Hat AMQ emphasizes flexibility and scalability, supporting multiple protocols and integrating seamlessly with the Red Hat ecosystem, making it ideal for open-source environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM MQ users seek improved monitoring tools, enhanced clustering, and modernized interfaces, along with better integration with new technologies like Kafka. Red Hat AMQ could enhance message ordering and clustering across nodes and improve technical support and documentation to boost developer productivity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM MQ is extensively used across on-premises and private clouds, appreciated for its stability but noted for complex setups. Its customer support is knowledgeable but varies in response time. Red Hat AMQ is praised for its lightweight nature and easy integration within the Red Hat ecosystem, though it requires improvement in technical support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: IBM MQ is often seen as costly due to its enterprise-level features, appealing to those valuing data security and performance, while Red Hat AMQ is more budget-friendly, offering competitive pricing, especially when bundled with OpenShift. Both products deliver good ROI, with IBM MQ ensuring data protection and stability and Red Hat AMQ providing flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. Red Hat AMQ

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

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 22.9%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat AMQ is 8.9%, up from 8.8% 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%
Red Hat AMQ	8.9%
Other	68.2%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

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

SachinJain

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.

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 biggest advantage of IBM MQ is its reliability."

"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."

"We have found the MQ messaging topologies valuable."

"The best thing about IBM MQ solution is that it's guaranteed delivery and it's fast."

"Has helped integrate between applications, reduce rework, and costs by reusing working components of existing applications."

"Data integrity, reliability and security are valuable features that IBM MQ possesses."

"IBM HQ's stability is great - we send six million messages a day, and we're very satisfied with HQ's ability to handle that volume."

"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."

More IBM MQ pros

"Reliability is the main criterion for selecting this tool for one of the busiest airports in Mumbai."

"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."

"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."

"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."

"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 solution is very lightweight, easy to configure, simple to manage, and robust since it launched."

"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, and it also shows utilization in the tool."

More Red Hat AMQ pros

Cons

"The integration capabilities could be even easier."

"I would like to see faster monitoring tools for this solution."

"If they could have some front-end monitoring tool that could be easily available for the team to use, that could be great."

"At a recent conference, I went to a presentation that had the latest version and it has amazing stuff that's coming out. So, I am excited to use those, specifically surrounding the web console and the fact that it's API integrated."

"IBM MQ's pricing is higher than its competitors'."

"The licensing fees should be more cost-effective so that we can better pitch the product to our clients. With the pricing as it is, they tend to move away from IBM products."

"They could integrate monitoring into the solution, a bit more than they do now. Currently, they have opened the REST API so you can get statistic and accounting information and details from MQ and build your own monitoring, if you want. IBM can improve the solution in this direction."

"Everything in the solution could be simplified a little. We have trouble with the configuration and cost which is mostly an internal issue, but nevertheless, the errors do come up when there are configuration changes across a specific version. We have slightly different versions, which may have slightly different configurations which cause issues."

More IBM MQ cons

"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."

"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."

"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."

"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."

"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."

"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."

More Red Hat AMQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"I think IBM needs to look at its pricing. The prices of IBM products should be simple. The old way of pricing should now be moving on to the cloud to be pay as you go, a plan-based kind of pricing."

"The fee for this solution is on the higher end of the scale."

"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."

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

"Small-scale companies may not want to buy IBM MQ because of its high cost."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open-source."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	2

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...

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

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

ActiveMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 39% of the time

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

PubSub+ Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 29% of the time

ActiveMQ vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 29% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Event Streams vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon MQ vs Red Hat AMQ

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat AMQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

January 2026

Download IBM MQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat AMQ

January 2026

Download Red Hat AMQ product report

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ

Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ

Overview

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

To respond to business demands quickly and efficiently, you need a way to integrate the applications and data spread across your enterprise. Red Hat JBoss A-MQ—based on the Apache ActiveMQ open source project—is a flexible, high-performance messaging platform that delivers information reliably, enabling real-time integration and connecting the Internet of Things (IoT).

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. Red Hat AMQ

February 2026

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