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ActiveMQ vs Redis comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
28
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (2nd)
Redis
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (5th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (3rd), AI Software Development (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

MD
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.
RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Caching has improved response times and reduces database load for high-traffic applications
Redis is very reliable, but it could be improved in areas such as monitoring, debugging, and feasibility into memory use. Better built-in tools for observability would help teams manage it more effectively at scale. Managing memory efficiently and troubleshooting issues can sometimes require additional tooling, so these areas can also be improved.One practical challenge I experienced is managing memory efficiently. Since Redis is in-memory, we need to carefully configure eviction policies and monitor usage. Debugging cache-related issues such as stale data or cache invalidation can sometimes be tricky. Additionally, tuning memory usage and eviction policies needs to be planned very carefully.

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."
"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."
"ActiveMQ is a great messaging system for synchronizing call and "fire and forget" types of calls."
"It is cost effective and is a much cheaper solution compared to Weblogic or IBM MQ."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"The installation was straightforward."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"I find Redis valuable primarily for its caching capabilities, particularly in handling cache requests effectively. Its simplicity in managing key-value pairs for caching is one of its strengths, making it a preferred choice over more complex databases like MongoDB for specific use cases. However, I haven't explored Redis extensively for managing complex data structures beyond caching, as MongoDB might be more suitable for such scenarios."
"Redis is good for distributed caching management."
"Redis is a powerful and reliable tool for improving application performance."
"The performance of Redis is very fast."
"The most valuable features of Redis are its ease of use and speed. It does not have access to the disc and it is fast."
"The ability to fetch and save data quickly is valuable."
"The in-memory data makes it fast."
"The product offers fast access to my database."
 

Cons

"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"Configuring ActiveMQ brokers for working in a cluster is difficult and has many constraints."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"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."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"There are some stability issues."
"We have had problems with the message selector as when the queue size reaches a certain level, the message selector does not have enough time to run and finish before the JMS reply timeout."
"Needs to focus on a certain facet and be good at it, instead of handling support for most of the available message brokers."
"Redis could improve its efficiency in handling locally stored data, not just Amazon Cloud or Google Cloud."
"There is room for AWS to provide more options for server types or a way to configure more or less memory for them."
"I would prefer it if there was more information available about Redis. That would make it easier for new beginners. Currently, there is a lack of resources."
"If we use a lot of data, it will eventually cost us a lot."
"Making management easier, especially for teams operating large Redis clusters, would be helpful."
"It's actually quite expensive."
"The initial setup took some time as our technical team needed to familiarize themselves with Redis."
"There are some features from MongoDB that I would like to see included in Redis to enhance its overall efficiency, such as the ability to perform remote behaviour. MongoDB is more efficient in handling updates than deletions and is quicker in processing updates, but it can be slower regarding deletions. This can sometimes pose a challenge, especially when dealing with large datasets or frequent data manipulations that involve deletions. In such cases, I often rewrite columns or update values instead of directly deleting data, as it can be more efficient."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"I think the software is free."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"We use the open-source version."
"Redis is an open-source product."
"Redis is not an overpriced solution."
"The tool is open-source. There are no additional costs."
"Redis is an open-source solution. There are not any hidden fees."
"We saw an ROI. It made the processing of our transactions faster."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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.
What advice do you have for others considering ActiveMQ?
We have not deployed ActiveMQ's flexible clustering as that requirement is not present for us. We only use active-passive configuration. On a scale of one to ten, I rate ActiveMQ a ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with Redis?
Making management easier, especially for teams operating large Redis clusters, would be helpful. More advanced built-in observability, performance insights, and automated recommendations would help...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
Redis is used primarily as a caching layer to provide a high-performance caching solution that improves application response times and reduces load on backend services and databases. We use it main...
What advice do you have for others considering Redis?
There are a couple of things to consider when using Redis. It is a supporting layer, not a main database. Identifying specific use cases where Redis can provide the most value, such as caching, ses...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AMQ
Redis Enterprise
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Apache, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Message Queue (MQ) Software. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.