Amazon MQ vs Apache Qpid Broker-J

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.

Apache Qpid Broker-J is free, open-source Java message-broker software for self-hosted deployments. It stores, routes and forwards messages using AMQP, supporting versions 0-8, 0-9, 0-9-1, 0-10 and 1.0, plus AMQP over WebSockets. Administration is available through REST, AMQP Management and a web console. Routing and queue features include header-based routing, message groups, server-side selectors, dead-letter queues, and last-value, priority and sorted queues. Pluggable persistence supports Derby, SQL and BDB stores. Listed operational features include high availability, producer flow control and flow to disk. Authentication can use LDAP, Kerberos, OAuth2 or SSL client certificates; access control lists and SSL secure connections are supported. The listed current release is 10.1.1, with source archives and tar.gz or zip binaries. Installation documentation covers Windows and UNIX systems. The project uses Apache License 2.0.