Amazon MQ vs SQS comparison

Amazon MQ and Amazon SQS are both solutions in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category. Amazon MQ is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6, while Amazon SQS is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon MQ holds a 3.6% mindshare in MQ, compared to Amazon SQS’s 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon MQ users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Amazon SQS users who would recommend it.

Amazon MQ

Read 7 Amazon MQ reviews

1,014 Views
842 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Amazon SQS

Read 30 Amazon SQS reviews

3,564 Views
1,960 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Amazon MQ

Amazon SQS

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 27, 2025

Amazon MQ and Amazon SQS are messaging solutions within AWS, with Amazon SQS often seen as having an advantage due to its simplicity and scalability.

Features: Amazon MQ supports industry-standard protocols for seamless integration with existing applications and offers rich features for complex applications. It is a full-fledged message broker with robust security. Amazon SQS is known for its simplicity and scalability, providing a straightforward API, low-latency message queuing, and easy implementation for serverless architectures. It offers features like FIFO capabilities and integration with AWS services.

Room for Improvement: Amazon MQ could improve its initial setup process to match the simplicity of SQS and enhance its scalability. It may also require better management of operational overhead. Amazon SQS could benefit from enhanced protocol support and additional features for more complex use cases. A richer set of enterprise-level support options and more advanced administrative tools could further strengthen its offering.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon SQS is more straightforward to deploy, requiring minimal setup, and focuses on rapid scalability, making it ideal for quick implementation. Amazon MQ is more complex to set up due to its feature-rich nature but offers detailed documentation and robust support for integrating with existing systems, benefiting projects needing comprehensive messaging features.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon MQ generally has higher setup costs due to its advanced functionality but delivers high ROI for projects requiring comprehensive messaging capabilities. Amazon SQS provides cost-effective pricing with a pay-as-you-go model, resulting in low initial setup costs and positive ROI for services requiring basic queuing capabilities. Its low cost and efficient scaling make it attractive for budget-conscious projects, with options starting at $0.00000040 per query request.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon MQ vs. Amazon SQS Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MQ vs. Amazon SQS

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:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon MQ

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Amazon SQS

Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon MQ is 3.6%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 8.1%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Message Queue (MQ) Software

Featured Reviews

AdnanKhan

Senior System Administrator at Ovrlod

Offers good web hosting capacity and security features, but price needs to be reduced

In terms of Amazon MQ's scalability and throughput capabilities, the tool is mostly accessible, stable, and competent with similar platforms. The tool's web hosting capacity and security features are good. The impact of the solution on process efficiencies depends on the clients. If the traffic is too high for a client, I suggest they go with Azure as it is more scalable and stable, while the support is good. I recommend Azure over Amazon MQ. Starting with Amazon MQ can be a bit tricky, but I know that the product is mature and the support is very good. The integration capabilities of Amazon MQ are flexible. I am not using AI with the tool. I would not recommend Amazon MQ to others. As a service provider, my company usually recommends cheaply priced and reliable solutions to our customers. Azure is one most reliable tool that comes at a good price point. Even Google Cloud is a super solution but for launching Google Cloud, support is not available, so one needs to do it with tutorials which are not completely available in YouTube. I rate the tool a seven and a half out of ten.

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Hari Prakash Pokala

Senior Java Engineer at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Valuable AWS services enhance data analysis yet could benefit from flexible data streams

I am using multiple services such as AWS Lambda, S3, EC2, ECS, and the SNS SQS services, along with QuickSight reports and some of the VPC concepts. We have an email notification system integrated with Spring Branch. Once a batch job completes, SNS and SQS trigger events, sending notification…

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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 have found Amazon MQ to provide scalability, robustness, and security."

"Amazon MQ is important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."

"Amazon MQ is managed by AWS and is easy to use."

"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."

"Amazon MQ is a secure solution."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its managed service aspect. It's simple to implement and use. It requires minimal effort to maintain business operations."

"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."

"The solution is easy to scale and cost-effective."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components."

"It's very quick and easy to build or set up Amazon SQS."

"Overall, I would rate Amazon SQS as ten out of ten."

"We use SNS as the publisher, and our procurement service subscribes to those events using SQS. In the past, we relied on time-based or batch-based processes to send data between services on-premises. With SQS, we can trigger actions based on real-time changes in business processes, improving reliability."

"The dead-letter queue is very helpful in maintaining the messages that come into the queue."

"I appreciate that Amazon SQS is fully integrated with Amazon and can be accessed through normal functions or serverless functions, making it very user-friendly. Additionally, the features are comparable to those of other solutions."

"One of the useful features is the ability to schedule a call after a certain number of messages accumulate in the container. For example, if there are ten messages in the container, you can perform a specific action."

More Amazon SQS pros

Cons

"The solution needs improvement in the back end and security."

"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."

"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."

"Amazon MQ is a good solution for small and medium-sized enterprises. It's open-source software, which means it's cheaper than its competitors."

"If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great."

"In community support, especially with distributed systems and integration, there is a need for better system organization."

"The product should improve its monitoring capabilities. It needs to improve the pricing also."

"As a company that uses IBM solutions, it's difficult to compare Amazon SQS to other solutions. We have been using IBM solutions for a long time and they are very mature in integration and queuing. In my role as an integration manager, I can say that Amazon SQS is designed primarily for use within the Amazon ecosystem and does not have the same level of functionality as IBM MQ or other similar products. It has limited connectivity options and does not easily integrate with legacy systems."

"The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days."

"I do not think that this solution is easy to use and the documentation of this solution has a lot of problems and can be improved in the next release. Most of the time, the images in the document are from older versions."

"A primary area of improvement for Amazon SQS is the message size limitation, which is currently restricted to 256 kilobytes per message."

"Sometimes, we have to switch to another component similar to SQS because the patching tool for SQS is relatively slow for us."

"Improvement is needed in terms of troubleshooting and logs."

"The initial setup of Amazon SQS is in the middle range of difficulty. You need to learn Amazon AWS and know how to navigate, create resources, and structures, and provide rules."

"Sending or receiving messages takes some time, and it could be quicker."

More Amazon SQS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As a client or as an end user, I would say that Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud are cheaper than Amazon MQ."

"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."

"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."

"Amazon SQS is quite expensive and is at the highest price point compared to other solutions."

"The pricing of Amazon SQS is reasonable. The first million requests are free every month, and after, it's cost 40 cents for every million requests. There are not any additional fees."

"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."

"It's quite expensive."

"Amazon SQS offers a generous free tier, beyond which it remains very cost-effective. The cost per million messages is less than a dollar, making it an economical choice."

"Compared to the other options and based on what I have heard, Amazon SQS is relatively more expensive, but it is not insanely expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."

More Amazon SQS pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon MQ?

The tool's most valuable feature is its managed service aspect. It's simple to implement and use. It requires minimal effort to maintain business operations.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon MQ?

The message queue requires an improvement in the message template MQ link. If Amazon provided a templating engine, it would be great.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon MQ?

We are using Amazon MQ for our AI model. It's used for notifications and other services. We have an application for which Amazon MQ acts as a broker.

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon SQS?

It is stable and scalable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?

The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days. It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for lo...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?

I primarily use Amazon SQS ( /products/amazon-sqs-reviews ) for asynchronous messaging. It is part of our distributed system design, where we use it for asynchronous communication by posting a mess...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM MQ vs Amazon MQ

Compared 28% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs Amazon MQ

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Kafka vs Amazon MQ

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service vs Amazon MQ

Compared 9% of the time

More Amazon MQ Competitors

Apache Kafka vs Amazon SQS

Compared 21% of the time

Redis vs Amazon SQS

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle Event Hub Cloud Service vs Amazon SQS

Compared 14% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs Amazon SQS

Compared 13% of the time

IBM MQ vs Amazon SQS

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon SQS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Message Queue (MQ) Software

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Amazon SQS

July 2025

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Overview

Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ that makes it easy to set up and operate message brokers in the cloud. Message brokers allow different software systems–often using different programming languages, and on different platforms–to communicate and exchange information. Amazon MQ reduces your operational load by managing the provisioning, setup, and maintenance of ActiveMQ, a popular open-source message broker. Connecting your current applications to Amazon MQ is easy because it uses industry-standard APIs and protocols for messaging, including JMS, NMS, AMQP, STOMP, MQTT, and WebSocket. Using standards means that in most cases, there’s no need to rewrite any messaging code when you migrate to AWS.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SQS eliminates the complexity and overhead associated with managing and operating message oriented middleware, and empowers developers to focus on differentiating work. Using SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between software components at any volume, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available. Get started with SQS in minutes using the AWS console, Command Line Interface or SDK of your choice, and three simple commands.

SQS offers two types of message queues. Standard queues offer maximum throughput, best-effort ordering, and at-least-once delivery. SQS FIFO queues are designed to guarantee that messages are processed exactly once, in the exact order that they are sent.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

SkipTheDishes, Malmberg, Dealer.com, Bench Accounting

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One

Buyer's Guide

Amazon MQ vs. Amazon SQS

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon MQ vs. Amazon SQS

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