No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS 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 SQS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 19.8%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 6.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ19.8%
Amazon SQS6.2%
Other74.0%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

NS
Sr. Manager - Digital at IndiGo
Offers diverse messaging protocols and excellent cloud support
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ The features of ActiveMQ and WebSphere MQ fundamentally do the same thing. From my experience, I prefer WebSphere MQ. Both are very sturdy solutions; there is no doubt. Both are sturdy and…
Roberto Costa - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
Facilitates seamless queue creation and management for efficient application decoupling
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage Amazon SQS is a simple service to use. If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"It's a very easy-to-use product, documentation is sufficient, and anyone with a bit of knowledge about technology, like Java, can quickly set it up and it could be up and running in minutes."
"For us, initial setup was VERY easy since we were using the Apache-provided Docker image for ActiveMQ, which alleviates a lot of the traditional pains involved with installing new software."
"The installation was pretty straightforward, and it was also easy setting up HA using an NFS share for hosting the KahaDB."
"Depending on the problem, AMQ resolved nearly everything."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"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."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"It is stable and scalable."
"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."
"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."
"We use SNS as the publisher, and our procurement service subscribes to those events using SQS. In the past, we relied on time-based or batch-based processes to send data between services on-premises. With SQS, we can trigger actions based on real-time changes in business processes, improving reliability."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
"If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier to create the queue."
"We use Amazon SQS for notifying, queuing servers, queuing messages, and notifying the people for alerting systems."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components, which is beneficial because our architecture usually has different components and the communication aspect of components is crucial."
 

Cons

"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."
"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"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 is need for more protocols and maybe they should provide documentation on the internet as well."
"From the TPS point of view, it's like 100,000 transactions that need to be admitted from different devices and also from the different minor small systems. Those are best fit for Kafka. We have used it on the customer side, and we thought of giving a try to ActiveMQ, but we have to do a lot of performance tests and approval is required before we can use it for this scale."
"Apache ActiveMQ needs some improvement playing with multi-platform message clients."
"Even though there is support from many open source communities, there is still weakness in ease-of-use and ease-of-configuration for more complex scenarios."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."
"However, combining the features of both products could be an easier option for me."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"Support could be improved."
"Amazon SQS is costly. I think there could be improvements in how it facilitates comparisons between different AWS products. A calculator would be helpful. The calculator for Kafka is based on factors like throughput or storage used in the last month. In contrast, the calculator for Amazon SQS is based on the number of transactions processed. These different approaches make it challenging to compare them directly. I suggest AWS provide a straightforward calculator where I can input one aspect, and it calculates costs for multiple solutions."
"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."
"For Amazon SQS, in particular, I think AWS Management Console has shortcomings. AWS Management Console should be a better pluggable option to help users with some integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"I think the software is free."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"We use the open-source version."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"Amazon SQS offers a generous free tier, beyond which it remains very cost-effective. The cost per million messages is less than a dollar, making it an economical choice."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"It's quite expensive."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions are best for your needs.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction 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 Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
 

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 SQS?
There is nothing I can remember that I would want as new features for Amazon SQS.
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon SQS?
I would recommend Amazon SQS to other people. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 10.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.