ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS comparison

Apache and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Apache is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7. Apache holds a 26.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 26 ActiveMQ reviews

6,942 Views
4,318 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Amazon SQS

Read 30 Amazon SQS reviews

2,390 Views
1,965 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Amazon SQS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

ActiveMQ and Amazon SQS are message broker solutions. Amazon SQS may have the upper hand in scalability and reliability, making it a potentially better choice based on data comparisons.

Features: ActiveMQ supports multiple protocols, advanced message queuing, and can be deployed on-premises. Amazon SQS integrates seamlessly with AWS, supports high scalability, and provides reliable message delivery.

Room for Improvement: ActiveMQ could benefit from smoother deployment and enhanced customer support. Amazon SQS might improve its flexibility and customization options for users unfamiliar with AWS.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ActiveMQ's deployment is customizable but requires manual setup, while Amazon SQS offers smoother deployment through AWS, requiring less hands-on management and providing robust customer support.

Pricing and ROI: ActiveMQ's open-source nature lowers setup costs, offering good ROI for technical users. Amazon SQS uses a pay-as-you-go model, providing predictable costs that scale with usage for efficient ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

April 2025

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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

ActiveMQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

2nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon SQS

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.4%, up from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.3%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

Prashant-Sharma

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Allows for asynchronous communication, enabling services to operate independently but issues with stability

The feature of ActiveMQ which I feel is good is its ability to have DLP, the later queues. If something goes wrong with the platform, it retries. Even if it fails, it goes to DLP, and later we can rescan the same event for processing. The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable.

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Ariel Tarayants

Powerful queue system facilitates seamless asynchronous operations

A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue. Enhanced filtering on the messages would be beneficial, as currently one has to pull all messages out, filter the right one by code, and then re-insert the remaining messages. This solution is not effective with the FIFO queue.

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 ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."

"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."

"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."

"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."

"It provides the best support services."

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."

"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."

"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."

More ActiveMQ pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is the interface."

"SQS is very stable, and it has lots of features."

"With SQS, we can trigger events in various cloud environments. It offers numerous benefits for us."

"It's very quick and easy to build or set up Amazon SQS."

"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 scale it manages is quite impressive."

"The solution is easy to scale and cost-effective."

More Amazon SQS pros

Cons

"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."

"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."

"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."

"I would like the tool to improve compliance and stability. We will encounter issues while using the central applications. In the solution's future releases, I want to control and set limitations for databases."

"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."

"The solution's stability needs improvement."

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

"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."

More ActiveMQ cons

"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."

"The current visibility timeout of five minutes is okay. However, I'd like to explore the possibility of extending it for specific use cases."

"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."

"The initial setup of Amazon SQS is in the middle range of difficulty. You need to learn Amazon AWS and know how to navigate, create resources, and structures, and provide rules."

"A feature I would like to see in Amazon SQS is the ability to view the content of messages without removing them from the queue."

"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."

"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."

"The cost became an issue, leading us to consider other solutions."

More Amazon SQS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"We use the open-source version."

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"I think the software is free."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"It's quite expensive."

"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."

"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."

"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."

"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."

"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."

"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."

More Amazon SQS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

34%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?

For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?

We need to address the non-deterministic load issues. Sometimes, ActiveMQ either restarts automatically or goes into ActiveMQ mode, causing interruptions. We need to enhance stability and improve t...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?

We have a digital ID platform that uses various services running on Kafka. There are two main endpoints where services interact with external services. These include an automatic biometric service ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon SQS?

It is stable and scalable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?

The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days. It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for lo...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?

I primarily use Amazon SQS ( /products/amazon-sqs-reviews ) for asynchronous messaging. It is part of our distributed system design, where we use it for asynchronous communication by posting a mess...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 53% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 11% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 4% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs Amazon SQS

Compared 25% of the time

Redis vs Amazon SQS

Compared 19% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Amazon SQS

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon SQS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

April 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SQS

April 2025

Download Amazon SQS product report

Also Known As

AMQ

No data available

Overview

Apache ActiveMQ is the most popular and powerful open source messaging and Integration Patterns server.

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License

Apache

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS eliminates the complexity and overhead associated with managing and operating message oriented middleware, and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work. Using SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components at any volume, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available. Get started with SQS in minutes using the AWS console, Command Line Interface or SDK of your choice, and three simple commands.

SQS offers two types of message queues. Standard queues offer maximum throughput, best-effort ordering, and at-least-once delivery. SQS FIFO queues are designed to guarantee that messages are processed exactly once, in the exact order that they are sent.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc.

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

April 2025

Free Report: ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

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