Amazon MQ vs Amazon SQS

Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. AWS handles broker provisioning, setup, upgrades, operation, maintenance, and failure recovery, while existing broker applications can migrate through standard messaging protocols without rewriting messaging code. Brokers can be launched from the AWS Management Console, CloudFormation, CLI, or API calls. Deployment options include single-instance, replicated-cluster, and active/standby modes, with availability and durability features across Availability Zones. ActiveMQ supports JMS, NMS, AMQP, STOMP, OpenWire, WebSocket, and MQTT, with clients for Java, Node.js, Go, Python, Ruby, and C++. RabbitMQ supports classic, classic mirrored, and quorum queues; quorum queues require RabbitMQ 3.13 or newer. CloudWatch receives broker and queue metrics every minute, and CloudTrail records related API calls. Data at rest uses AWS KMS encryption and broker connections use TLS; TLS 1.3 is unavailable for RabbitMQ brokers. Brokers can run inside an Amazon VPC, with private connections across VPCs and accounts for RabbitMQ. The service supports dead-letter queues, per-queue ordering, and configurable delivery guarantees. It is paid, with an AWS Free Tier plan for eligible new customers for six months; pay-as-you-go broker usage is hourly and storage monthly, with standard transfer fees potentially applying.

Amazon SQS is a cloud message queuing service for microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. It lets separate software components send, store, and receive messages, supporting decoupled and event-driven designs. Standard queues provide at-least-once delivery with best-effort ordering, while FIFO queues preserve order without introducing duplicates. Standard queues support nearly unlimited transactions per second for each API action; FIFO high-throughput mode supports up to 70,000 messages per second without batching. Messages can contain up to 256 KB, or larger payloads can use the Java Extended Client Library with Amazon S3. SQS accepts batches of up to 10 messages and retains messages for up to 14 days. Dead Letter Queues handle messages exceeding a configured receive count and must match the source queue type. Integrations include Redshift, DynamoDB, RDS, EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, and SNS fanout. Server-side encryption uses AWS KMS keys. The Free Tier is free for 1 million requests; separate S3, KMS, and data-transfer charges may apply.