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Apache Kafka vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
Red Hat AMQ
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Apache Kafka and Red Hat AMQ aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Apache Kafka is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 2.8%, up 1.9% compared to last year.
Red Hat AMQ, on the other hand, focuses on Message Queue (MQ) Software, holds 9.5% mindshare, up 8.0% since last year.
Streaming Analytics
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
Sther Martins - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-learn solution that can be used with microservices
We have done around 20 projects in Red Hat AMQ. I have two projects using Red Hat AMQ, and I can share how its scalability has impacted them. In one project, we have a solution for authentication and authorization using SSO. We need to integrate with other systems in two ways. We use Red Hat AMQ for social data, sending messages to other queues, and integrating with business. We have two databases with the same information. The solution is good because it helps us solve problems with messaging. For instance, when messaging doesn't change, we still check the cloud and verify the information. In another project, we have a large banking solution for the Amazon region using Red Hat AMQ for financial transactions. In this solution, business messages are sent, and another system processes them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"valuable features relate to microservices architecture and working on KStream and KSQL DB as a microservices event bus."
"Kafka can process messages in real-time, making it useful for applications that require near-instantaneous processing."
"Kafka is an open-source tool that's easy to use in our country, and the command line interface is powerful."
"The stream processing is a very valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"A great streaming platform."
"Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming."
"Overall, I rate Apache Kafka as nine out of ten for its scalability and stability."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Kafka is its versatility. It can solve many use cases or can be a part of many use cases. Its fundamental value of it is in the real-time processing capability."
"AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination."
"The solution is very lightweight, easy to configure, simple to manage, and robust since it launched."
"The most valuable feature for us is the operator-based automation that is provided by Streams for infrastructure as well as user and topic management. This saves a lot of time and effort on our part to provide infrastructure. For example, the deployment of infrastructure is reduced from approximately a week to a day."
"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"This product is well adopted on the OpenShift platform. For organizations like ours that use OpenShift for many of our products, this is a good feature."
"Red Hat AMQ's best feature is its reliability."
 

Cons

"Kafka's interface could also use some work. Some of our products are in C, and we don't have any libraries to use with C. From an interface perspective, we had a library from the readies. And we are streaming some of the products we built to readies. That is one of the requirements. It would be good to have those libraries available in a future release for our C++ clients or public libraries, so we can include them in our product and build on that."
"Stability of the API and the technical support could be improved."
"The interface has room for improvement, and there is a steep learning curve for Hadoop integration. It was a struggle learning to send from Hadoop to Kafka. In future releases, I'd like to see improvements in ETL functionality and Hadoop integration."
"The solution should be easier to manage. It needs to improve its visualization feature in the next release."
"It’s a trial-and-error process with no one-size-fits-all solution. Issues may arise until it’s appropriately tuned."
"One of the things I am mostly looking for is that once the message is picked up from Kafka, it should not be visible or able to be consumed by other applications, or something along those lines. That feature is not present, but it is not a limitation or anything of the sort; rather, it is a desirable feature. The next release should include a feature that prevents messages from being consumed by other applications once they are picked up by Kafka."
"There have been some challenges with monitoring Apache Kafka, as there are currently only a few production-grade solutions available, which are all under enterprise license and therefore not easily accessible. The speaker has not had access to any of these solutions and has instead relied on tools, such as Dynatrace, which do not provide sufficient insight into the Apache Kafka system. While there are other tools available, they do not offer the same level of real-time data as enterprise solutions."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex."
"The challenge is the multiple components it has. This brings a higher complexity compared to IBM MQ, which is a single complete unit."
"There are some aspects of the monitoring that could be improved on. There is a tool that is somewhat connected to Kafka called Service Registry. This is a product by Red Hat that I would like to see integrated more tightly."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"This product needs better visualization capabilities in general."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."
"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a bit cheaper compared to other Q applications."
"I rate Apache Kafka's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees for Apache Kafka."
"The solution is open source."
"Apache Kafka is free."
"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
"Kafka is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"It is open source software."
"I would not subscribe to the Confluent platform, but rather stay on the free open source version. The extra cost wasn't justified."
"The solution is open-source."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"There is a subscription needed for this solution and there are support plans available."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
What do you like most about Red Hat AMQ?
AMQ is highly scalable and performs well. It can process a large volume of messages in one second. AMQ and OpenShift are a good combination.
What needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The product needs to improve its documentation and training.
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
We just started working with Red Hat AMQ. We selected it as the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) platform for a new airport project. I manage the entire Master System Integration (MSI) project for one ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Red Hat JBoss A-MQ, Red Hat JBoss AMQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
E*TRADE, CERN, CenturyLink, AECOM, Sabre Holdings
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Kafka vs. Red Hat AMQ and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.