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ActiveMQ vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

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
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat AMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
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 Red Hat AMQ is 9.6%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sther Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-learn solution that can be used with microservices
We have done around 20 projects in Red Hat AMQ. I have two projects using Red Hat AMQ, and I can share how its scalability has impacted them. In one project, we have a solution for authentication and authorization using SSO. We need to integrate with other systems in two ways. We use Red Hat AMQ for social data, sending messages to other queues, and integrating with business. We have two databases with the same information. The solution is good because it helps us solve problems with messaging. For instance, when messaging doesn't change, we still check the cloud and verify the information. In another project, we have a large banking solution for the Amazon region using Red Hat AMQ for financial transactions. In this solution, business messages are sent, and another system processes them.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The initial setup and first deployment of ActiveMQ is fairly simple."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"Reliable message delivery and mirroring."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"It provides the best support services."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination."
"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."
"The solution is very lightweight, easy to configure, simple to manage, and robust since it launched."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."
"This product is well adopted on the OpenShift platform. For organizations like ours that use OpenShift for many of our products, this is a good feature."
"The most valuable feature for us is the operator-based automation that is provided by Streams for infrastructure as well as user and topic management. This saves a lot of time and effort on our part to provide infrastructure. For example, the deployment of infrastructure is reduced from approximately a week to a day."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
 

Cons

"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"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 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"
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"There are some stability issues."
"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."
"The challenge is the multiple components it has. This brings a higher complexity compared to IBM MQ, which is a single complete unit."
"There are some aspects of the monitoring that could be improved on. There is a tool that is somewhat connected to Kafka called Service Registry. This is a product by Red Hat that I would like to see integrated more tightly."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."
"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"We use the open-source version."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"I think the software is free."
"The solution is open-source."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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.
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Red Hat AMQ?
AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination.
What needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The product needs to improve its documentation and training.
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
We just started working with Red Hat AMQ. We selected it as the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) platform for a new airport project. I manage the entire Master System Integration (MSI) project for one ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. Red Hat AMQ and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.