ActiveMQ vs Apache Kafka vs PubSub+ Platform 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 26.2% mindshare in the category. Apache Kafka is ranked #8 in SA , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 3.5% 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

6,175 Views
5,681 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Apache Kafka

Read 88 Apache Kafka reviews

5,201 Views
884 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

PubSub+ Platform

Read 17 PubSub+ Platform reviews

2,443 Views
1,002 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

Apache Kafka

PubSub+ Platform

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Message Queue (MQ) Software Report (Updated: July 2025).

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Message Queue (MQ) Software

July 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:

Mindshare comparison

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Streaming Analytics

Event Monitoring

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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BhanuChidigam

Sofware Engineering Manager at Wells Fargo

Performs well, high availability, and helpful support

We use approximately four people for the maintenance of the solution. My advice to others is this solution has high throughput and is used for many stock exchanges. For business critical use cases, such as processing financial transactions at a quick speed, I would recommend this solution. I rate PubSub+ Event Broker an eight out of ten.

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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

"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."

"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."

"It provides the best support services."

"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 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."

"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."

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

More ActiveMQ pros

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

"The solution is very scalable. We started with a cluster of three and then scaled it to seven."

"Good horizontal scaling and design."

"I have seen a return on investment with this solution."

"The most valuable features of the solution revolve around areas like the latency part, where the tool offers very little latency and the sequencing part."

"All the features of Apache Kafka are valuable, I cannot single out one feature."

"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."

"I appreciate that Apache Kafka is fast and secure thanks to implementing it with AWS, allowing me to secure it on a high level."

More Apache Kafka pros

"One of the main reasons for using PubSub+ is that it is a proper event manager that can handle events in a reactive way."

"As of now, the most valuable aspects are the topic-based subscription and the fanout exchange that we are using."

"We've built a lot of products into it and it's been quite easy to feed market data onto the systems and put entitlements and controls around that. That was a big win for us when we were consolidating our platforms down. Trying to have one event bus, one messaging bus, for the whole globe, and consolidate everything over time, has been key for us. We've been able to do that through one API, even if it's across the different languages."

"When we went to add another installation in our private cloud, it was easy. We received support from Solace and the install was seamless with no issues."

"This solution reduces the latency to access changes in real-time and the effort required to onboard a new subscriber. It also reduces the maintenance of each of those interfaces because now the publisher and subscribers are decoupled. Event Broker handles all the communication and engagement. We can just push one update, then we don't have to know who is consuming it and what's happening to that publication downstream. It's all done by the broker, which is a huge benefit of using Event Broker."

"I rate the PubSub+ Platform a 9 out of 10."

"Guaranteed Messaging allows for us to transport messages between on-prem and the cloud without any loss of data."

"The way we can replicate information and send it to several subscribers is most valuable. It can be used for any kind of business where you've got multiple users who need information. Any company, such as LinkedIn, with a huge number of subscribers and any business, such as publishing, supermarket, airline, or shipping can use it."

More PubSub+ Platform pros

Cons

"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 solution's stability needs improvement."

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

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."

"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."

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

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

More ActiveMQ cons

"In the data sharing space, the performance of Apache Kafka could be improved. The performance angle is critical, and while it works in milliseconds, the goal is to move towards microseconds."

"Maintaining and configuring Apache Kafka can be challenging, especially when you want to fine-tune its behavior."

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

"The UI is based on command line. It would be helpful if they could come up with a simpler user interface."

"In the data sharing space, the performance of Apache Kafka could be improved."

"Data pulling and restart ability need improving."

"Observability could be improved."

"In Apache Kafka, it is currently difficult to create a consumer."

More Apache Kafka cons

"Some of the feature's gaps with some of the open-source vendors have been closed in a lot of ways. Being more agile and addressing those earlier could be an area for improvement."

"The integrations could improve in PubSub+ Event Broker."

"It could be cheaper. It could also have easier usage. It is a brilliant product, but it is quite complex to use."

"I heard that it is quite expensive compared to Kafka."

"The deployment process is complex."

"We've pointed out some things with the DMR piece, the event mesh, in edge cases where we could see a problem. Something like 99 percent of users wouldn't ever see this problem, but it has to do with if you get multiple bad clients sending data over a WAN, for example. That could then impact other clients."

"We have requested to be able to get into the payload to do dynamic topic hierarchy building. A current workaround is using the message's header, where the business data can be put into this header and be used for a dynamic topic lookup. I want to see this in action when there are a couple of hundred cases live. E.g., how does it perform? From an administration perspective, is the ease of use there?"

"The solution could be improved by enhancing the message pooling size for persistent messages to handle both small and large messages effectively."

More PubSub+ Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

"We use the open-source version."

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

"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."

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

"It’s open source, ergo free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"I was using the product's free version."

"The price for the enterprise version is quite high. For on-premise, there is an annual fee, which starts at 60,000 euros, but it is usually higher than 100,000 euros. The cost for a project including the subscription is usually between 100,000 to 200,000 euros. The cost also depends on the level of support. There are two different levels of support."

"The price of Apache Kafka is good."

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

"This is an open-source version."

"We are using the free version of Apache Kafka."

"Apache Kafka has an open-source pricing."

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

More Apache Kafka pricing and cost advice

"We are looking for something that will add value and fit for purpose. Freeware is good if you want to try something quickly without putting in much money. However, as far as our decision is concerned, I don't think it helps. At the end of the day, if we are convinced that a capability is required, we will ask for the funding. Then, when the funding is available, we will go for an enterprise solution only."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The pricing and licensing were very transparent and well-communicated by our account manager."

"We have been really happy with the product licensing rates. It has been free for us, up to a 100,000 transactions per second, and all we have to do is pay for support. Making their product available and accessible to us has not been a problem at all."

"Having a free version of the solution was a big, important part of our decision to go with it. This was the big driver for us to evaluate Solace. We started using it as the free version. When we felt comfortable with the free version, that is when we bought the enterprise version."

"The licensing is dependent on the volume that is flowing. If you go for their support services, it will cost some more money, but I think it is worth it, especially if you are just starting your journey."

"The price of PubSub+ Event Broker is reasonable for the capability it offers. However, when compared to others solutions on the market it is expensive."

"Having a free version is critical for our technology operations use case. This is primarily because our technology operations team is a cost center in our company. They are not profit drivers and having a free version for installation will probably meet our needs. Even for production, it'll support up to a 100,000 messages per second. I don't think in technology operations that we have that many events and alerts from our detection tools. Even if I have 20 or 30 event detection products out there, they're only going to publish the things which are critical or warnings. I don't think we'll ever reach a 100,000 messages per second."

More PubSub+ Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

32%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

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?

Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selec...

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...

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

What needs improvement with PubSub+ Event Broker?

Regarding improving the PubSub+ Platform, I'm not sure about the pricing aspect, but I heard that it is quite expensi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for PubSub+ Event Broker?

My typical use case for the PubSub+ Platform is as an event-driven solution for communication between two components.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering PubSub+ Event Broker?

I have experience working with Kafka, PubSub+ Platform, and IBM MQ, all three of them. We are customers, meaning my c...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 50% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 17% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 6% of the time

Redis vs ActiveMQ

Compared 2% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

Red Hat AMQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

IBM MQ vs Apache Kafka

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka

Compared 10% of the time

Informatica Data Engineering Streaming vs Apache Kafka

Compared 3% of the time

More Apache Kafka Competitors

IBM MQ vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 18% of the time

Confluent vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon SQS vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Apache Flink vs PubSub+ Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More PubSub+ Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

August 2025

Download ActiveMQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Apache Kafka

August 2025

Download Apache Kafka product report

Buyer's Guide

PubSub+ Platform

August 2025

Download PubSub+ Platform product report

Also Known As

AMQ

No data available

PubSub+ Event Broker, PubSub+ Event Portal

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

PubSub+ Platform supports real-time shipment tracking, IT event management in multiclouds, and connects legacy and cloud-native systems for application modernization. It's utilized for trading, streaming market data, and app-to-app messaging, enhancing event-driven architectures with reliable message queuing.

Organizations adopt PubSub+ to efficiently transport events across hybrid and cloud environments, managing audit trails and long processing tasks. The platform aids integration through dynamic data publication, event mesh capabilities, and WAN optimization. Features like seamless integration, protocol agnosticism, and flexible topic hierarchy enhance versatility. Solace Admin Utility simplifies configuration and management, while the event portal allows hybrid deployment.

What are the key features of PubSub+ Platform?

Dynamic Data Publication: Enables flexible and responsive data handling.
Event Mesh Capabilities: Facilitates efficient event transportation.
WAN Optimization: Enhances data transfer across networks.
Protocol Agnosticism: Supports a wide range of protocols for integration.
Flexible Topic Hierarchy: Allows detailed and organized data exchange.
Solace Admin Utility: Provides intuitive configuration and management.
Granular Topic Filtering: Offers precise data filtering options.
Guaranteed Messaging: Ensures reliable message delivery.

What benefits or ROI should users consider?

Seamless Integration: Reduces complexity in connecting systems.
Performance and Scaling: Supports high-load environments efficiently.
Asynchronous Messaging: Improves application performance.
Robust Support System: Provides guidance and problem resolution.

PubSub+ is implemented in industries requiring real-time data handling and integration between disparate systems. Financial institutions use it for trading and streaming market data, while logistics companies benefit from real-time shipment tracking. Enterprises apply it to modernize operations by connecting legacy systems with cloud-native applications, enhancing their architecture and ensuring data reliability across environments.

Solace

Sample Customers

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

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest

FxPro, TP ICAP, Barclays, Airtel, American Express, Cobalt, Legal & General, LSE Group, Akuna Capital, Azure Information Technology, Brand.net, Canadian Securities Exchange, Core Transport Technologies, Crédit Agricole, Fluent Trade Technologies, Harris Corporation, Korea Exchange, Live E!, Mercuria Energy, Myspace, NYSE Technologies, Pico, RBC Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank, Unibet

Buyer's Guide

Message Queue (MQ) Software

July 2025

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