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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
5.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (9th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (3rd), AI Software Development (17th)
 

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.
reviewer2005650 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a photography company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Optimize AI projects with reliable data processing while addressing scaling challenges
There are a few areas where Redis could improve. The pub-sub capabilities could be optimized to handle network sessions better, as there are challenges with maintaining sessions between clients and systems. Data persistence and recovery face issues with compatibility across major versions, making upgrades possible but downgrades not active. There's a need for better migration tools to support data movements in a hybrid environment. Concerns exist about licensing and community engagement due to changes in Redis and its forks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ActiveMQ demonstrates excellent stability and sturdiness."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"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."
"Most people or many people recommended using ActiveMQ on small and medium-scale applications."
"For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"It provides the best support services."
"The performance of Redis is very fast."
"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."
"The ability to fetch and save data quickly is valuable."
"What I like best about Redis is its fast and easy use. It has interesting algorithms like HyperLogLog and provides useful features. It's also good for implementing scalable rate limiting."
"The product offers fast access to my database."
"The solution is fast, provides good performance, and is not too expensive."
"Redis is a simple, powerful, and fast solution."
"The online interface is very fast and easy to use."
 

Cons

"The solution can improve the other protocols to equal the AMQ protocol they offer."
"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."
"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"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 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."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"The UI. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. The UI is too simple. Sometimes you wanna see the messages coming to the queue, and you have to refresh the dashboard, the console of the product."
"The development of clusters could improve. Additionally, it would be helpful if it was integrated with Amazon AWS or Google Cloud."
"It's actually quite expensive."
"Redis could improve its efficiency in handling locally stored data, not just Amazon Cloud or Google Cloud."
"There is a lack of documentation on the scalability of the solution."
"The initial setup of Redis was difficult, with a rating of two or three out of ten."
"There is room for AWS to provide more options for server types or a way to configure more or less memory for them."
"The only thing is the lack of a GUI application. There was a time when we needed to resolve an issue in production. If we had a GUI, it would have been easier."
"In future releases, I would like Redis to provide its users with an option like schema validation. Currently, the solution lacks to offer such functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

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?
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 do you like most about Redis?
Redis is better tested and is used by large companies. I haven't found a direct alternative to what Redis offers. Plus, there are a lot of support and learning resources available, which help you u...
What needs improvement with Redis?
The disadvantage of Redis is that it's a little bit hard to have too many clusters or too many nodes and create the clusters. The sync between the nodes is easier to implement with Couchbase, for e...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
Redis is used for a part of a booking engine for travel, specifically for the front part to get some sessions and information about the sessions. If a customer or user is using the sites in differe...
 

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 ActiveMQ vs. Redis and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.