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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
6th
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 May 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 19.8%, down from 26.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon MQ is 4.1%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ19.8%
Amazon MQ4.1%
Other76.1%
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."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"It is cost effective and is a much cheaper solution compared to Weblogic or IBM MQ."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"ActiveMQ is a good solution; it is low cost, high performance, and scalable."
"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."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."
"Amazon MQ is a good solution for small and medium-sized enterprises."
"Amazon MQ is managed by AWS and is easy to use."
"Amazon MQ is important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."
"Amazon MQ is a secure solution."
"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"For additional functionality, I suggest making it easier to install and monitor the queues, topics, broker status, publisher status, and consumer status. Improved monitoring tools would help avoid needing to manually access the server for monitoring purposes."
"There are some stability issues."
"The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage. That model includes a single point of failure in that storage medium."
"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."
"The clustering for sure needs improvement. When we were using it, the only thing available was an active/passive relationship that had to be maintained via shared file storage."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"The solution needs improvement in the back end and security."
"Monitoring capabilities are not yet fully developed, since it's a message broker service, so it focuses more on the health of Apache."
"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."
"In community support, especially with distributed systems and integration, there is a need for better system organization."
"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."
 

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."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"I think the software is free."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"As a client or as an end user, I would say that Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud are cheaper than Amazon MQ."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
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: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.