No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon MQ vs IBM MQ 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
IBM MQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
174
Ranking in other categories
Business Activity Monitoring (1st), Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of Amazon MQ is 3.9%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM MQ is 20.7%, down from 26.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM MQ20.7%
Amazon MQ3.9%
Other75.4%
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.
David Pizinger - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has faced unexpected VM restarts but continues to deliver messages reliably
I'm not sure if we've utilized IBM MQ's high availability. Our MQ VMs are set up in clusters, and I think our queue managers are set up in pairs. However, I don't know if we actually use any specific high availability features of IBM MQ that are out of the box. We have it architected with high availability because we use F5 load balancers, and everything about our architecture is highly available. I haven't personally used the management tools with IBM MQ, but we do have them, and our middleware folks leverage them. I can't really comment on them because I don't use them myself. I don't think the management tools help optimize message flows, and I'm not really aware of how they help in this. I'm not familiar with dynamic routing for IBM MQ.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial Amazon MQ setup is very easy both when you do it on your own or use the self-managed instance."
"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 important for being collaborative, allowing for centralized information."
"We have found Amazon MQ to provide scalability, robustness, and security."
"Amazon MQ is a secure 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."
"Amazon MQ is a very scalable solution."
"It doesn't lose transactions, it's fast, and it runs on every platform."
"We use queue managers/concentrators for message flow going upstream and downstream on applications with enterprise licenses."
"I would recommend IBM MQ to others that are using major transaction processing."
"I have a very high impression of the stability of MQ; we haven't had any problems with it."
"The most valuable feature is the interaction within the system."
"It's good for messaging, very reliable, and forward compatible, so it makes our life easy when it comes to upgrades."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The methodology and the way in which the platform has been produced as a standard is most valuable. There are so many different versions of it now, but the actual basic functionality and the simplicity of it have made it far easier to be implemented in so many different instances. When I worked with the OS/2 or PS/2 machine environment, the messaging mechanisms were based upon IBM MQ. It is so versatile, which is the main reason that I'm a fan of it."
 

Cons

"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."
"Depending on your use cases, Amazon MQ can be cheap or expensive."
"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."
"Amazon MQ isn't a cheap tool."
"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."
"Monitoring capabilities are not yet fully developed, since it's a message broker service, so it focuses more on the health of Apache."
"The product should improve its monitoring capabilities. It needs to improve the pricing also."
"Although I'm not involved with costs in our company, IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"It's been expensive to keep going the way we're going, and the turnaround is a bit slow, slower than we want."
"The solution should offer a freeware version, free vouchers, or certifications for learning purposes and building a knowledge base."
"In some cases, when a file got transferred, it has same name on both sides. That could have something to do with the product or it could have to do with something else."
"It should support a wider range of protocols, not just a few specific ones. Many other products have broader protocol support, and IBM MQ is lagging in that area."
"I'm not aware of the pricing. That's something others deal with, but they do tell me that it is expensive."
"The response time for IBM MQ support could be better because when we are using IBM MQ and something goes wrong, support is required as the resource availability of the IBM product is very limited."
"IBM MQ won’t support large streams of data but Kafka will support large streams of data."
 

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 think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
"We have a special contract with IBM MQ that give us a certain price."
"Most of our customers are quite happy with the solution but they have an issue with the cost. They want to move to cheaper solutions."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."
"The solution costs are high, it is going to cost a fair bit for annual operating costs and support."
"The pricing seems good according to the functionality that the solution provides."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Message Queue (MQ) Software solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software 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 Business20
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise147
 

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 is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SkipTheDishes, Malmberg, Dealer.com, Bench Accounting
Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon MQ vs. IBM MQ and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.