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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 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 SQS is 5.8%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ActiveMQ20.1%
Amazon SQS5.8%
Other74.1%
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.
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

"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"ActiveMQ is a good solution; it is low cost, high performance, and scalable."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"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 scale it manages is quite impressive."
"If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier to create the queue."
"I think the tool is very reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
"This is a free-to-use solution for somebody who wants to do 1 million requests, and this is sufficient for any application at a small organization."
"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."
"It works consistently and is economical under a standard non-FIFO model."
"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."
 

Cons

"There are some stability issues."
"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 included admin web app is not sufficient and we ended up disabling it."
"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."
"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 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."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"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."
"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."
"The cost became an issue, leading us to consider other solutions."
"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
"The price is on the high end and has room for improvement."
"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."
"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."
"The primary issue was the increase in costs due to frequent polling for messages."
 

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."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"I think the software is free."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"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 the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
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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%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.