ActiveMQ vs Apache Kafka comparison

The compared ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka solutions aren't in the same category. ActiveMQ is ranked #2 in MQ , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 25.4% mindshare in the category. Apache Kafka is ranked #7 in SA , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of ActiveMQ users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Apache Kafka users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

5,859 Views
5,390 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Read 89 Apache Kafka reviews

4,880 Views
878 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Apache Kafka

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

May 2024

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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

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (2nd)

Apache Kafka

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (7th)

Mindshare comparison

ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ActiveMQ is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 25.4%, up 23.8% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 3.6% mindshare, up 2.0% since last year.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ActiveMQ	25.4%
IBM MQ	25.9%
Red Hat AMQ	9.6%
Other	39.1%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Apache Kafka	3.6%
Apache Flink	14.6%
Databricks	13.1%
Other	68.7%

Streaming Analytics

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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Snehasish Das

Technology Leader at eTCaaS

Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability

I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…

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

"It provides the best support services."

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

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

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."

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

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

"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."

More ActiveMQ pros

"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."

"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."

"We appreciate the ability to persistently and quickly write data, as well as the flexibility to customize it for multiple customers. Additionally, we like the ability to retain data within Apache Kafka and use features, such as time travel to access past customer data. The connection with other systems, such as Apache Kafka and IBM DB2."

"The solution is very easy to set up."

"As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable...The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems."

"Overall, I rate Apache Kafka as nine out of ten for its scalability and stability."

"The high availability is valuable. It is robust, and we can rely on it for a huge amount of data."

"Apache Kafka is actually a distributed commit log. That is different than most messaging and queuing systems before it."

More Apache Kafka pros

Cons

"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 solution's stability needs improvement."

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."

"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."

"I would rate the stability a five out of ten because sometimes it gets stuck, and we have to restart it. We"

"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."

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

More ActiveMQ cons

"I suggest using cloud services because the solution is expensive if you are using it on-premises."

"Too much dependency on the zookeeper and leader selection is still the bottleneck for Kafka implementation."

"The GUI tools for monitoring and support are still very basic and not very rich. There is no help in determining a shard key for performance."

"There have been some challenges with monitoring Apache Kafka, as there are currently only a few production-grade solutions available, which are all under enterprise license and therefore not easily accessible. The speaker has not had access to any of these solutions and has instead relied on tools, such as Dynatrace, which do not provide sufficient insight into the Apache Kafka system. While there are other tools available, they do not offer the same level of real-time data as enterprise solutions."

"Kafka does not provide control over the message queue, so we do not know whether we are experiencing lost or duplicate messages."

"Apache Kafka has performance issues that cause it to lag."

"The solution could always add a few more features to enhance its usage."

"The interface has room for improvement, and there is a steep learning curve for Hadoop integration. It was a struggle learning to send from Hadoop to Kafka. In future releases, I'd like to see improvements in ETL functionality and Hadoop integration."

More Apache Kafka cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

"I think the software is free."

"We use the open-source version."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open source."

"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."

"Apache Kafka is an open-source solution and there are no fees, but there are fees associated with confluence, which are based on subscription."

"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."

"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."

"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."

"The solution is free, it is open-source."

"This is an open-source solution and is free to use."

More Apache Kafka pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

32%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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	32
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	47

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 are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?

Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...

See all answers

What do you like most about Apache Kafka?

Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?

Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 51% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 6% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Red Hat AMQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 17% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka

Compared 10% of the time

More Apache Kafka Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

September 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

September 2025

Download Apache Kafka 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

Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed streaming platform that serves as a central hub for handling real-time data streams. It allows efficient publishing, subscribing, and processing of data from various sources like applications, servers, and sensors.

Kafka's core benefits include high scalability for big data pipelines, fault tolerance ensuring continuous operation despite node failures, low latency for real-time applications, and decoupling of data producers from consumers.

Key features include topics for organizing data streams, producers for publishing data, consumers for subscribing to data, brokers for managing clusters, and connectors for easy integration with various data sources.

Large organizations use Kafka for real-time analytics, log aggregation, fraud detection, IoT data processing, and facilitating communication between microservices.

Apache

Sample Customers

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

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

May 2024

Free Report: ActiveMQ vs. Apache Kafka

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