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 8.5, and holds a 22.4% mindshare in the category. Apache Kafka is ranked #7 in SA , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 4.0% 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

4,388 Views
4,169 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Read 90 Apache Kafka reviews

4,342 Views
1,172 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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Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

6.8

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 22.4%, down 25.7% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 4.0% mindshare, up 2.3% since last year.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ActiveMQ	22.4%
IBM MQ	22.9%
Red Hat AMQ	8.9%
Other	45.800000000000004%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Apache Kafka	4.0%
Apache Flink	11.3%
Databricks	9.5%
Other	75.2%

Streaming Analytics

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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Bruno da Silva

Senior Manager at Timestamp, SA

Have worked closely with the team to deploy streaming and transaction pipelines in a flexible cloud environment

The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better. I started working with Apache Kafka from its early days, and I have seen many improvements. The back office functionality could be enhanced. Scaling up continues to be a challenge, though it is much easier now than it was in the beginning.

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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

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

"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."

"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."

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

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

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

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

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

More ActiveMQ pros

"The use of Kafka's logging mechanism has been extremely beneficial for us, as it allows us to sequence messages, track pointers, and manage memory without having to create multiple copies."

"Its availability is brilliant."

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

"It's an open-source product, which means it doesn't cost us anything to use it."

"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is Kafka Connect."

"With Kafka, events and streaming are persistent, and multiple subscribers can consume the data. This is an advantage of Kafka compared to simple queue-based solutions."

"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."

"A great streaming platform."

More Apache Kafka pros

Cons

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

"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."

"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."

"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."

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

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

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

More ActiveMQ cons

"While the solution scales well and easily, you need to understand your future needs and prep for the peaks."

"Observability could be improved."

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

"The interface of Apache Kafka could be significantly better."

"Kafka 2.0 has been released for over a month, and I wanted to try out the new features. However, the configuration is a little bit complicated: Kafka Broker, Kafka Manager, ZooKeeper Servers, etc."

"We cannot apply all of our security requirements because it is hard to upload them."

"Scalability may cause issues in the product if my nodes are full with multiple sources and delivery is slowing down."

"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."

More Apache Kafka cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the open-source version."

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

"It’s open source, ergo free."

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

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

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

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"I think the software is free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

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

"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."

"Apache Kafka is open-source and can be used free of charge."

"Kafka is more reasonably priced than IBM MQ."

"The solution is open source; it's free to use."

"It is open source software."

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

"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."

More Apache Kafka 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

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

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	49

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 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

What needs improvement with Apache Kafka?

The long-term data storage feature in Apache Kafka depends on the setting, but I believe the maximum duration is seven days.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 53% 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

Red Hat JBoss A-MQ for xPaaS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 1% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Red Hat AMQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 16% of the time

Databricks vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 11% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 9% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 7% of the time

More Apache Kafka Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

February 2026

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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