ActiveMQ vs IBM MQ comparison

Apache and IBM are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Apache is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Apache holds a 22.4% mindshare in MQ, compared to IBM’s 22.5% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of IBM users who would recommend it.

ActiveMQ

Read 28 ActiveMQ reviews

4,451 Views
4,184 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

Read 174 IBM MQ reviews

6,227 Views
4,546 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ActiveMQ

IBM MQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

IBM MQ and ActiveMQ are both competitive products in the messaging solutions category. IBM MQ seems to have the upper hand due to its enterprise-level features such as reliability and scalability, making it ideal for high-volume environments.

Features: IBM MQ offers robust features like guaranteed message delivery, comprehensive integration across various platforms, and scalability. ActiveMQ stands out with its multi-protocol support, easy deployment through Docker, and cost-effectiveness, which appeals to smaller or budget-constrained organizations.

Room for Improvement: IBM MQ could benefit from more user feedback on its security enhancements and a more intuitive interface. It also needs better cloud service integration. ActiveMQ requires improvements in clustering setups, documentation, and multi-language client support. It could also enhance its ease-of-configuration and stability in complex scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM MQ excels in hybrid and on-premises deployments, supported by strong technical assistance, despite some concerns about cost and speed. ActiveMQ offers flexibility and cloud deployment ease, but may lack the enterprise-level support seen with IBM MQ.

Pricing and ROI: IBM MQ has higher licensing costs, justified by its reliability and support, suitable for enterprises seeking a long-term ROI. Conversely, ActiveMQ's open-source nature provides a significant cost advantage, appealing to small setups needing cost-effective solutions despite potential support trade-offs.

To learn more, read our detailed ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ

December 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

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM MQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

174

Ranking in other categories

Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 22.5%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM MQ	22.5%
ActiveMQ	22.4%
Other	55.1%

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover

Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot

Feb 13, 2019

What Is The Biggest Difference Between ActiveMQ and IBM MQ?

ActiveMQ offers very high throughput and low latency compared to IBM MQ. ActiveMQ supports standard messaging protocols like AMQP, STOMP, MQTT etc whereas IBM MQ just comply with JMS and its own protocol. IBM MQ Light supports AMQP though. IBM MQ is much preferred in enterprise environment, probably due to the support. Redhat AMQ offers enterprise support on ActiveMQ. AFAIK documentation wise, they are at par. Both support clustering. But only in ActiveMQ real storage of messages in another broker which is less loaded happens. IBM MQ just enables communication between Queue managers. But I would prefer to put a few more options on the table. 1. RabbitMQ - fully compliant with protocols, supports replication and distribution of messages, throughput in tens of thousands 2. Redis - Light weight single threaded server. Supports pub sub messaging and supports HA via sentinel and clustering for distributed messaging 3. Kafka - Preferred mechanism for data streaming. Throughput in millions. 4. ZeroMQ - Brokerless messaging platform. Very high throughput. 5. NanoMsg - Brokerless. Claims to be advanced than ZeroMQ

See all answers

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.

Read full review

MykolaKuzmenko

SWIFT manager at Raiffeisen Bank Aval

Reliable payment processing is achieved with minimal disruption

Currently, we have some disadvantages; it's a bit difficult to use IBM ID to access support from the IBM site. To get nice support from IBM, we need to use IBM ID, and it's a bit complicated to integrate it with IBM support. Support can be better because sometimes we need explanations for some behaviors of the product, and it's not easy to reach the proper person in IBM support. They could add some new features into IBM MQ to make it better. A graphical user interface in addition to MQ Explorer could be useful, but we are satisfied with MQ Explorer as well.

Read full review

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."

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

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

"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."

"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."

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

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."

"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."

More ActiveMQ pros

"The MQ protocol is widely used across multiple applications and it's so simple for connectivity."

"I haven't seen any issues with respect to the message loss."

"The solution is stable."

"We have implemented business to business transactions over MQ messaging. The guaranteed and once only delivery ensures business integrity."

"Currently, we are not using many advanced features. We are only using point-to-point MQ. I have previously used features like context-based authentication, SSL authentication, and high availability. These are good and pretty cool features. They make your business reliable. For critical business needs, everyone uses only IBM MQ. It is the first choice because of its reliability. There is a one-send-and-one-delivery feature. It also has a no-message-loss feature, and because of that, only IBM MQ is used in banking or financial sectors."

"I like the architecture it provides seamlessly for assured delivery."

"I appreciate the level of control we have over queue managers, queues, and the messaging itself. That provides good security. So, the control and scalability of messaging are important to me."

"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."

More IBM MQ pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The solution's stability needs improvement."

"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."

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

More ActiveMQ cons

"What could be improved is the high-availability. The way MQ works is that it separates the high-availability from the workload balance. The scalability should be easier. If something happens so that the messages are not available on each node, scalability is only possible for the workload balance."

"Customer support response times could be improved."

"The issue is that they're using a very old clustering model."

"More documentation would be good because some features are not deeply implemented."

"The tool is expensive."

"I have used the support from IBM MQ. There is some room for improvement."

"Sometimes, not all messages are consumed in the queues. File transfers need improvement."

"Presenting and maybe having some different options for different user experiences based on the administrative duties that you have to do as an app manager or configure the server or security would be an improvement."

More IBM MQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We use the open-source version."

"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."

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

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

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

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."

"It’s open source, ergo free."

More ActiveMQ pricing and cost advice

"You have to license per application installation and if you expand vertically or horizontally, you will be paying for more licenses. The licenses are approximately $10,000 to $15,000 a license, it can get expensive quite quickly."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."

"The problem with this product is that it's a little bit expensive."

"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."

"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."

"Licensing for this software is on a yearly basis. The standard fee includes the maintenance and updates that are released periodically."

"IBM's licensing model seems more reasonable than some competitors. They charge based on usage, which is good."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

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Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover

Service Delivery Manager at PeerSpot

Feb 13, 2019

What Is The Biggest Difference Between ActiveMQ and IBM MQ?

See 2 answers

Jack Angoe

Technical Lead at Interface Fintech Ltd

Feb 12, 2019

From my Experience so far i will go for RabbitMQ its rock solid and robust with a simple learning curve. Its free and has great documentation available

Read full answer

Winster Jose

Senior Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Feb 13, 2019

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

32%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare 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	20
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	147

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 is MQ software?

Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...

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

How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat AMQ vs ActiveMQ

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs ActiveMQ

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon SQS vs ActiveMQ

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs ActiveMQ

Compared 5% of the time

EMQX vs ActiveMQ

Compared 4% of the time

More ActiveMQ Competitors

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs IBM MQ

Compared 5% of the time

PubSub+ Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

December 2025

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Also Known As

AMQ

WebSphere MQ

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

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

Sample Customers

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

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

Buyer's Guide

ActiveMQ vs. IBM MQ

December 2025

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