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ActiveMQ vs Amazon MQ 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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 20.1%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon MQ is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ20.1%
Amazon MQ3.9%
Other76.0%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

MD
Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction
With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.
RamilCerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at SM Supermalls
Has provided consistent functionality across on-premise and cloud while simplifying cloud integration
I have experience with on-premise setups using ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, but with regards to AWS, I use it via cloud only. There's a free tier with Amazon MQ based on their website, which is a six-month free trial of a single instance, allowing per month usage of either ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ, five gig of Amazon EFS storage, and for ActiveMQ, it's 20 gig of Amazon EBS storage for RabbitMQ. I did not purchase Amazon MQ through AWS Marketplace. Amazon MQ has published information about having 650 hours of free trial usage. This can be found via the AWS website by searching for AWS MQ. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon MQ an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"I fully recommend this product, but you need to have some expertise working with JMS and asynchronous tasks."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"One of the most important features of ActiveMQ is the ability to set up a network of brokers, and the ability to forward the message to another broker in the network, where there is a demand for messages from a consumer."
"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."
"We have found Amazon MQ to provide scalability, robustness, and security."
"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."
"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."
"Amazon MQ is managed by AWS and is easy to use."
"Since we utilize AWS, it's easy to integrate Amazon MQ and work with other third-party software, as they have standard communications via API or native language."
"Amazon MQ is a secure solution."
"Amazon MQ is important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its managed service aspect. It's simple to implement and use. It requires minimal effort to maintain business operations."
 

Cons

"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."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"There were stability issues. With a network of brokers, you get a lot of issues, especially if you have the publisher and consumer using the same channel or connection, on different topics and/or queues."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"Because this is an open-source project, there is no support. We don't have any help or anything like that."
"Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks."
"Amazon MQ is a good solution for small and medium-sized enterprises. It's open-source software, which means it's cheaper than its competitors."
"The product should improve its monitoring capabilities. It needs to improve the pricing also."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"The solution needs improvement in the back end and security."
"On a scale of one to 10, one being the best and 10 being the worst, I would give Amazon MQ an eight for overall performance."
"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."
"If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great."
"Monitoring capabilities are not yet fully developed, since it's a message broker service, so it focuses more on the health of Apache."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"I think the software is free."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"As a client or as an end user, I would say that Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud are cheaper than Amazon MQ."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

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 Amazon MQ?
Amazon MQ needs to have data collected on performance to analyze trends for improvement. Additionally, some tools can suggest how to improve performance in terms of speed, time, and processing, whi...
What is your primary use case for Amazon MQ?
I have some experience working with Amazon MQ.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon MQ?
I have experience with on-premise setups using ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, but with regards to AWS, I use it via cloud only. There's a free tier with Amazon MQ based on their website, which is a six-mon...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
SkipTheDishes, Malmberg, Dealer.com, Bench Accounting
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Amazon MQ and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.