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  1. Stackups
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  4. Message Queue
  5. ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS vs RabbitMQ

ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS vs RabbitMQ

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon SQS
Amazon SQS
Stacks2.8K
Followers2.0K
Votes171
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ
Stacks21.8K
Followers18.9K
Votes558
GitHub Stars13.2K
Forks4.0K
ActiveMQ
ActiveMQ
Stacks879
Followers1.3K
Votes77
GitHub Stars2.4K
Forks1.5K

ActiveMQ vs Amazon SQS vs RabbitMQ: What are the differences?

Introduction

ActiveMQ, Amazon SQS, and RabbitMQ are all messaging systems that facilitate the communication between different components of a distributed system. However, there are key differences between these three messaging systems.

  1. Messaging Model: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ both support multiple messaging models including point-to-point (queues) and publish-subscribe (topics), while Amazon SQS only supports point-to-point model with queues. This means that with ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ, a message can be sent to one or many consumers, whereas with SQS, a message can only be received by one consumer.

  2. Delivery Guarantees: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ provide a higher level of delivery guarantee compared to Amazon SQS. ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ support both at least once and exactly once delivery semantics, ensuring that messages are not lost. On the other hand, Amazon SQS guarantees "at least once" delivery, meaning a message may be duplicated or delayed but not lost.

  3. Message Size: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ have higher message size limits compared to Amazon SQS. ActiveMQ supports message sizes up to 100 MB, RabbitMQ supports up to 128 MB, while SQS has a limit of 256 KB for standard queues and 2 GB for FIFO queues.

  4. Message Ordering: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ guarantee message ordering within a single queue or topic. Messages are processed in the order they are received. However, Amazon SQS does not guarantee strict message ordering. While FIFO queues in SQS provide ordering at the message group level, messages within a group can be processed out of order.

  5. Scalability and Availability: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ require manual setup and management of infrastructure for scalability and availability. Amazon SQS, being a managed service, automatically scales and provides high availability without requiring manual intervention. With SQS, developers can focus on building applications instead of managing infrastructure.

  6. Pricing Model: ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ are self-hosted messaging systems, and their pricing is based on various factors like server infrastructure, software licenses, and maintenance. On the other hand, Amazon SQS follows a pay-per-use pricing model, where users are charged based on the number of messages sent, received, and stored in queues.

In summary, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ provide more flexibility in terms of messaging model and delivery guarantees, while Amazon SQS offers the benefits of managed infrastructure, scalability, and easier pricing.

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Advice on Amazon SQS, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ

viradiya
viradiya

Apr 12, 2020

Needs adviceonAngularJSAngularJSASP.NET CoreASP.NET CoreMSSQLMSSQL

We are going to develop a microservices-based application. It consists of AngularJS, ASP.NET Core, and MSSQL.

We have 3 types of microservices. Emailservice, Filemanagementservice, Filevalidationservice

I am a beginner in microservices. But I have read about RabbitMQ, but come to know that there are Redis and Kafka also in the market. So, I want to know which is best.

933k views933k
Comments
Kirill
Kirill

GO/C developer at Duckling Sales

Feb 16, 2021

Decided

Maybe not an obvious comparison with Kafka, since Kafka is pretty different from rabbitmq. But for small service, Rabbit as a pubsub platform is super easy to use and pretty powerful. Kafka as an alternative was the original choice, but its really a kind of overkill for a small-medium service. Especially if you are not planning to use k8s, since pure docker deployment can be a pain because of networking setup. Google PubSub was another alternative, its actually pretty cheap, but I never tested it since Rabbit was matching really good for mailing/notification services.

266k views266k
Comments
André
André

Technology Manager at GS1 Portugal - Codipor

Jul 30, 2020

Needs adviceon.NET Core.NET Core

Hello dear developers, our company is starting a new project for a new Web App, and we are currently designing the Architecture (we will be using .NET Core). We want to embark on something new, so we are thinking about migrating from a monolithic perspective to a microservices perspective. We wish to containerize those microservices and make them independent from each other. Is it the best way for microservices to communicate with each other via ESB, or is there a new way of doing this? Maybe complementing with an API Gateway? Can you recommend something else different than the two tools I provided?

We want something good for Cost/Benefit; performance should be high too (but not the primary constraint).

Thank you very much in advance :)

461k views461k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon SQS
Amazon SQS
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ
ActiveMQ
ActiveMQ

Transmit any volume of data, at any level of throughput, without losing messages or requiring other services to be always available. With SQS, you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available messaging cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.

RabbitMQ gives your applications a common platform to send and receive messages, and your messages a safe place to live until received.

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License.

A queue can be created in any region.;The message payload can contain up to 256KB of text in any format. Each 64KB ‘chunk’ of payload is billed as 1 request. For example, a single API call with a 256KB payload will be billed as four requests.;Messages can be sent, received or deleted in batches of up to 10 messages or 256KB. Batches cost the same amount as single messages, meaning SQS can be even more cost effective for customers that use batching.;Long polling reduces extraneous polling to help you minimize cost while receiving new messages as quickly as possible. When your queue is empty, long-poll requests wait up to 20 seconds for the next message to arrive. Long poll requests cost the same amount as regular requests.;Messages can be retained in queues for up to 14 days.;Messages can be sent and read simultaneously.;Developers can get started with Amazon SQS by using only five APIs: CreateQueue, SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, ChangeMessageVisibility, and DeleteMessage. Additional APIs are available to provide advanced functionality.
Robust messaging for applications;Easy to use;Runs on all major operating systems;Supports a huge number of developer platforms;Open source and commercially supported
Protect your data & Balance your Load; Easy enterprise integration patterns; Flexible deployment
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
13.2K
GitHub Stars
2.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
4.0K
GitHub Forks
1.5K
Stacks
2.8K
Stacks
21.8K
Stacks
879
Followers
2.0K
Followers
18.9K
Followers
1.3K
Votes
171
Votes
558
Votes
77
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 62
    Easy to use, reliable
  • 40
    Low cost
  • 28
    Simple
  • 14
    Doesn't need to maintain it
  • 8
    It is Serverless
Cons
  • 2
    Difficult to configure
  • 2
    Has a max message size (currently 256K)
  • 2
    Proprietary
  • 1
    Has a maximum 15 minutes of delayed messages only
Pros
  • 235
    It's fast and it works with good metrics/monitoring
  • 80
    Ease of configuration
  • 60
    I like the admin interface
  • 52
    Easy to set-up and start with
  • 22
    Durable
Cons
  • 9
    Too complicated cluster/HA config and management
  • 6
    Needs Erlang runtime. Need ops good with Erlang runtime
  • 5
    Configuration must be done first, not by your code
  • 4
    Slow
Pros
  • 18
    Easy to use
  • 14
    Open source
  • 13
    Efficient
  • 10
    JMS compliant
  • 6
    High Availability
Cons
  • 1
    ONLY Vertically Scalable
  • 1
    Support
  • 1
    Difficult to scale
  • 1
    Low resilience to exceptions and interruptions

What are some alternatives to Amazon SQS, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ?

Kafka

Kafka

Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.

Celery

Celery

Celery is an asynchronous task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It is focused on real-time operation, but supports scheduling as well.

NSQ

NSQ

NSQ is a realtime distributed messaging platform designed to operate at scale, handling billions of messages per day. It promotes distributed and decentralized topologies without single points of failure, enabling fault tolerance and high availability coupled with a reliable message delivery guarantee. See features & guarantees.

ZeroMQ

ZeroMQ

The 0MQ lightweight messaging kernel is a library which extends the standard socket interfaces with features traditionally provided by specialised messaging middleware products. 0MQ sockets provide an abstraction of asynchronous message queues, multiple messaging patterns, message filtering (subscriptions), seamless access to multiple transport protocols and more.

Apache NiFi

Apache NiFi

An easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data. It supports powerful and scalable directed graphs of data routing, transformation, and system mediation logic.

Gearman

Gearman

Gearman allows you to do work in parallel, to load balance processing, and to call functions between languages. It can be used in a variety of applications, from high-availability web sites to the transport of database replication events.

Memphis

Memphis

Highly scalable and effortless data streaming platform. Made to enable developers and data teams to collaborate and build real-time and streaming apps fast.

IronMQ

IronMQ

An easy-to-use highly available message queuing service. Built for distributed cloud applications with critical messaging needs. Provides on-demand message queuing with advanced features and cloud-optimized performance.

Apache Pulsar

Apache Pulsar

Apache Pulsar is a distributed messaging solution developed and released to open source at Yahoo. Pulsar supports both pub-sub messaging and queuing in a platform designed for performance, scalability, and ease of development and operation.

Confluent

Confluent

It is a data streaming platform based on Apache Kafka: a full-scale streaming platform, capable of not only publish-and-subscribe, but also the storage and processing of data within the stream

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