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Apache Kafka vs Red Hat AMQ comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 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

Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (7th)
Red Hat AMQ
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (6th)
 

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 3.6%, up 2.0% compared to last year.
Red Hat AMQ, on the other hand, focuses on Message Queue (MQ) Software, holds 9.6% mindshare, up 8.4% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka3.6%
Apache Flink14.6%
Databricks13.1%
Other68.7%
Streaming Analytics
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat AMQ9.6%
IBM MQ25.9%
ActiveMQ25.4%
Other39.1%
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…
SachinJain - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently manages high availability and fault tolerance for critical systems with user-friendly management features
I have experience with features such as message persistence and fault tolerance because I configured high availability and fault tolerance for the client environment, including active-active and active-passive configurations. I mainly prefer active-active. I created a security feature for user authentication and authorization in Red Hat AMQ using vault. When you enable the vault, then your whole Red Hat AMQ becomes more secure. Management is straightforward. I configured it and created documentation. The operations team takes care of the operation part. I educate them on how to manage access, so they can easily add new people who join the company or manage the people who leave. The benefits of using Red Hat AMQ include easy configuration and monitoring. On the portal, I can monitor how many packets or alerts have been generated or sent to the end user via Red Hat AMQ along with messages or emails. It also shows utilization in the tool. These features also come with other AMQs such as Amazon and IBM.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kafka is scalable. It can manage a high volume of data from many sources."
"The most valuable features of the solution revolve around areas like the latency part, where the tool offers very little latency and the sequencing part."
"The processing power of Apache Kafka is good when you have requirements for high throughput and a large number of consumers."
"I like the performance and reliability of Kafka. I needed a data streaming buffer that could handle thousands of messages per second with at least one processing point for an analytics pipeline. Kafka fits this requirement very well."
"As a software developer, I have found Apache Kafka's support to be the most valuable...The solution is easy to integrate with any of our systems."
"The most valuable feature of Kafka is the Kafka Streams client."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"Kafka provides us with a way to store the data used for analytics. That's the big selling point. There's very good log management."
"The most valuable feature is stability."
"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."
"I can organize the tool with microservices, which allows me to use it across different services. It is easy to learn."
"My impression is that it is average in terms of scalability."
"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."
"The benefits of using Red Hat AMQ include easy configuration and monitoring; on the portal, I can monitor how many packets or alerts have been generated or sent to the end user via Red Hat AMQ along with messages or emails, and it also shows utilization in the tool."
"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."
 

Cons

"Observability could be improved."
"Config management can be better."
"The UI used to access Kafka topics can be further improved."
"Managing Apache Kafka can be a challenge, but there are solutions. I used the newest release, as it seems they have removed Zookeeper, which should make it easier. Confluent provides a fully managed Kafka platform, in which the cluster does not need to be managed."
"We cannot apply all of our security requirements because it is hard to upload them."
"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."
"For personal preferences, since we use Managed Kafka in AWS, I would appreciate having some kind of UI integrated into Apache Kafka for connecting to it because using code to connect it is basic, but we can use a UI."
"The ability to connect the producers and consumers must be improved."
"There is improvement needed to keep the support libraries updated."
"The product needs to improve its documentation and training."
"The turnaround of adopting new versions of underlying technologies sometimes is too slow."
"There are several areas in this solution that need improvement, including clustering multi-nodes and message ordering."
"Red Hat AMQ's cost could be improved, and it could have better integration."
"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."
"AMQ could be better integrated with Jira and patch management tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is approximately $600,000 USD."
"We use the free version."
"The solution is open source; it's free to use."
"Running a Kafka cluster can be expensive, especially if you need to scale it up to handle large amounts of data."
"This is an open-source solution and is free to use."
"It is open source software."
"When starting to look at a distributed message system, look for a cloud solution first. It is an easier entry point than an on-premises hardware solution."
"Kafka is open-source and it is cheaper than any other product."
"This is a very cost-effective solution and the pricing is much better than competitors."
"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."
"Red Hat AMQ's pricing could be improved."
"The solution is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
 

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 needs improvement with Red Hat AMQ?
The areas for improvement include cost, which is a primary concern. The deployment process is simple, but the cost is very important. Additionally, the management portal should be more user-friendl...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat AMQ?
For use cases for Red Hat AMQ, let's take banking purposes. This depends upon the firm or the service or product company. For example, let's take HDFC Bank or any other bank. Whenever a customer de...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat AMQ?
I work primarily with Red Hat. For IBM, I have worked with their channel partner, not directly with IBM. For Amazon, I work with partners only. I am working with one company as a consultant. I also...
 

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.
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