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Amazon MQ vs SQS 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

Amazon MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon SQS
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon MQ is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon SQS is 5.8%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon SQS5.8%
Amazon MQ3.9%
Other90.3%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

RamilCerrada - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution architect at SM Supermalls
Has provided consistent functionality across on-premise and cloud while simplifying cloud integration
I have experience with on-premise setups using ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, but with regards to AWS, I use it via cloud only. There's a free tier with Amazon MQ based on their website, which is a six-month free trial of a single instance, allowing per month usage of either ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ, five gig of Amazon EFS storage, and for ActiveMQ, it's 20 gig of Amazon EBS storage for RabbitMQ. I did not purchase Amazon MQ through AWS Marketplace. Amazon MQ has published information about having 650 hours of free trial usage. This can be found via the AWS website by searching for AWS MQ. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Amazon MQ an eight out of ten.
Roberto Costa - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data & AI Engineer at Imprint
Facilitates seamless queue creation and management for efficient application decoupling
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage Amazon SQS is a simple service to use. If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."
"Amazon MQ is managed by AWS and is easy to use."
"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."
"Since we utilize AWS, it's easy to integrate Amazon MQ and work with other third-party software, as they have standard communications via API or native language."
"Amazon MQ is a secure solution."
"Amazon MQ is important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."
"We have found Amazon MQ to provide scalability, robustness, and security."
"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."
"We used SQS for the Kapolei system to ensure that certain tasks were executed precisely once. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) capability was a great feature for us. Additionally, its redundancy out of the box meant we didn't have to worry about missing messages. It provided peace of mind and automatically instilled trust, relieving us of any concerns."
"Amazon SQS provides faster search through indexing via OpenSearch."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to decouple components."
"The dead-letter queue is very helpful in maintaining the messages that come into the queue."
"The solution is simple to use, and I am able to find out what's going on very easily."
"The scale it manages is quite impressive."
"We use Amazon SQS for notifying, queuing servers, queuing messages, and notifying the people for alerting systems."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon SQS is its scalability."
 

Cons

"In community support, especially with distributed systems and integration, there is a need for better system organization."
"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."
"On a scale of one to 10, one being the best and 10 being the worst, I would give Amazon MQ an eight for overall performance."
"Monitoring capabilities are not yet fully developed, since it's a message broker service, so it focuses more on the health of Apache."
"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."
"The solution needs improvement in the back end and security."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"The support hasn't been ideal. It could be better."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, especially for the FIFO model."
"Be cautious around pay-as-you-use licensing as costs can become expensive."
"Amazon SQS is costly. I think there could be improvements in how it facilitates comparisons between different AWS products. A calculator would be helpful. The calculator for Kafka is based on factors like throughput or storage used in the last month. In contrast, the calculator for Amazon SQS is based on the number of transactions processed. These different approaches make it challenging to compare them directly. I suggest AWS provide a straightforward calculator where I can input one aspect, and it calculates costs for multiple solutions."
"There could be improvements in the UI for security and scalability."
"The current visibility timeout of five minutes is okay. However, I'd like to explore the possibility of extending it for specific use cases."
"There is room for improvement in handling large-scale data."
"It would be easier to have a dashboard that allows us to see everything and manage everything since we have so many queues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"As a client or as an end user, I would say that Google Cloud Storage or Google Cloud are cheaper than Amazon MQ."
"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"SQS's pricing is very good - I would rate it nine out of ten."
"Compared to EC2 and other services, Amazon SQS' pricing is cheaper."
"It's quite expensive."
"Amazon SQS is moderately priced."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-use. It depends on your usage and configuration."
"Amazon SQS is more affordable compared to other solutions."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon MQ?
Amazon MQ needs to have data collected on performance to analyze trends for improvement. Additionally, some tools can suggest how to improve performance in terms of speed, time, and processing, whi...
What is your primary use case for Amazon MQ?
I have some experience working with Amazon MQ.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon MQ?
I have experience with on-premise setups using ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, but with regards to AWS, I use it via cloud only. There's a free tier with Amazon MQ based on their website, which is a six-mon...
What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
There is nothing I can remember that I would want as new features for Amazon SQS.
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
If you need a messaging service to help decouple your application, Amazon SQS would be a smart choice because it's easy to use and very easy to manage.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon SQS?
I would recommend Amazon SQS to other people. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 10.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SkipTheDishes, Malmberg, Dealer.com, Bench Accounting
EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MQ vs. Amazon SQS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.