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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 October 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 25.1%, up from 24.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 7.8%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ActiveMQ25.1%
Amazon SQS7.8%
Other67.1%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data flow management with high performance and occasional stability improvements
For high traffic volumes where management time on ActiveMQ is minimal and where the rate of flow from the provider is slower than from the consumer, ActiveMQ offers the highest performance based on our experience. It has been efficient for data flow control between two endpoints, despite occasional unexpected glitches. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Hari Prakash Pokala - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable AWS services enhance data analysis yet could benefit from flexible data streams
I am using multiple services such as AWS Lambda, S3, EC2, ECS, and the SNS SQS services, along with QuickSight reports and some of the VPC concepts.  We have an email notification system integrated with Spring Branch. Once a batch job completes, SNS and SQS trigger events, sending notification…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"There is a vibrant community, and it is one of the strongest points of this product. We always get answers to our problems. So, my experience with the community support has been good."
"All Amazon Web Services resources are easy to configure."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"The most valuable features include the ability to handle a huge number of messages and the presence of a dead letter queue."
"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."
"We used SQS for the Kapolei system to ensure that certain tasks were executed precisely once. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) capability was a great feature for us. Additionally, its redundancy out of the box meant we didn't have to worry about missing messages. It provided peace of mind and automatically instilled trust, relieving us of any concerns."
"We use the tool in interface integrations."
"Amazon SQS provides faster search through indexing via OpenSearch."
 

Cons

"There are some stability issues."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."
"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."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"Sometimes, we have to switch to another component similar to SQS because the patching tool for SQS is relatively slow for us."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"The solution is not available on-premises so that rules out any customers looking for the messaging solution on-premises."
"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."
"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I think the software is free."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"We use the open-source version."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"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."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"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 quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
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 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.
 

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: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.