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 #4 with an average rating of 8.8. Apache holds a 26.2% mindshare in MQ, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 8.0% 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 27 ActiveMQ reviews

6,237 Views
2,763 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Amazon SQS

Read 30 Amazon SQS reviews

2,088 Views
1,233 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

June 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

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.2%, up from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.0%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu

Technical Director at NIDP

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.

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Hari Prakash Pokala

Senior Java Engineer at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

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…

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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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."

"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."

"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."

More ActiveMQ pros

"The scale it manages is quite impressive."

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

"The libraries that connect and manage the queues are rich in features."

"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."

"There is no setup just some easy configuration required."

"I like how we can subscribe to multiple topics in Amazon SQS. It's also much simpler and quicker to set up than other solutions. It also supports patterns like Kafka and RapidMQ's fan-out pattern but with easier implementation."

"One of the most valuable features of Amazon SQS is its event-driven invocation."

"I am able to find out what's going on very easily."

More Amazon SQS pros

Cons

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."

"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."

"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."

"The UI. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. The UI is too simple. Sometimes you wanna see the messages coming to the queue, and you have to refresh the dashboard, the console of the product."

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

"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."

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

More ActiveMQ cons

"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."

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

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

"There is room for improvement by making use of Kafka services to create more flexible data streams."

"Sometimes, we have to switch to another component similar to SQS because the patching tool for SQS is relatively slow for us."

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

"As a company that uses IBM solutions, it's difficult to compare Amazon SQS to other solutions. We have been using IBM solutions for a long time and they are very mature in integration and queuing. In my role as an integration manager, I can say that Amazon SQS is designed primarily for use within the Amazon ecosystem and does not have the same level of functionality as IBM MQ or other similar products. It has limited connectivity options and does not easily integrate with legacy systems."

"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."

More Amazon SQS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

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

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

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

"I think the software is free."

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

"We use the open-source version."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"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."

"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."

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

"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."

"It's quite expensive."

"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."

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

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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 54% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 10% 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 23% of the time

Redis vs Amazon SQS

Compared 19% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 9% of the time

More Amazon SQS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

June 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon SQS

June 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

June 2025

Free Report: ActiveMQ vs. Amazon SQS

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