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 8.5, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.0. Apache holds a 22.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 7.6% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

4,388 Views
4,169 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon SQS

Read 31 Amazon SQS reviews

2,465 Views
1,454 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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

February 2026

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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

8.0

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

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 7.6%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ActiveMQ	22.4%
Amazon SQS	7.6%
Other	70.0%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

MoumitaDas

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.

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reviewer2281650

IT Specialist at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Efficient data retention and high scalability drive significant productivity improvements

The features of Amazon SQS that I find most valuable include its data retention capabilities and message durability. The retention of data is crucial, as other systems like RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ require management. Furthermore, if there's a failure in the system after consuming a message, SQS's settings ensure the message is not deleted until confirmation. Additionally, generating FIFO and standard queues based on use cases is a helpful feature.

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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."

"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."

"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."

"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."

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

"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."

"The main function I find valuable in ActiveMQ is facilitating message transfer within the client's internal network. ActiveMQ handles the message transfer from the internal network to the cloud. Regarding multi-protocols, we use different approaches based on client capabilities. Some clients connect for real-time data transfer, using database queries for periodic updates every ten minutes. We collect data from multiple clients, ensuring we get real-time sensor values where possible and periodic updates for others."

More ActiveMQ pros

"I think the tool is very reliable."

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

"Amazon SQS is reliable, with no issues to date."

"I appreciate that Amazon SQS is fully integrated with Amazon and can be accessed through normal functions or serverless functions, making it very user-friendly. Additionally, the features are comparable to those of other solutions."

"If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier to create the queue."

"It is stable and scalable."

"One of the useful features is the ability to schedule a call after a certain number of messages accumulate in the container. For example, if there are ten messages in the container, you can perform a specific action."

"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."

More Amazon SQS pros

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."

"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."

"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."

"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."

"There are some stability issues."

"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."

"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."

More ActiveMQ cons

"I cannot send a message to multiple people simultaneously. It can only be sent to one recipient."

"There is room for improvement in handling large-scale data."

"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."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing, especially for the FIFO model."

"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."

"It would be beneficial to have the ability to peek at messages currently in Amazon SQS without needing to monitor incoming messages."

"Packages sometimes have delays in dropping, indicating reliability issues."

"There are some issues with SQS's transaction queue regarding knowing if something has been received."

More Amazon SQS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s open source, ergo free."

"There are no fees because it is open-source."

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

"We use the open-source version."

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

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

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"It's quite expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a 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."

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

"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it 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."

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

More Amazon SQS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	17

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

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?

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 ...

See all answers

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.

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?

There is nothing I can remember that I would want as new features for Amazon SQS.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 52% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 14% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Compared 3% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Amazon SQS

Compared 16% of the time

Redis vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 12% of the time

IBM MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 11% of the time

Apache Kafka vs Amazon SQS

Compared 11% of the time

More Amazon SQS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

January 2026

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SQS

January 2026

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

February 2026

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