Amazon MQ vs RabbitMQ

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.

RabbitMQ is an open source messaging and streaming broker for application communication, including distributed microservices, real-time data, and IoT. Publishers can route messages to one or more consumers using routing, filtering, streaming, and federation. Message acknowledgements and replication across a cluster support delivery reliability, and delivery guarantees are configurable. Supported protocols include AMQP 0-9-1, AMQP 1.0, MQTT, STOMP, RabbitMQ Streams, HTTP, and WebSocket, including browser communication over WebSocket. Client libraries are available for Java, .NET/C#, Erlang, and other languages; the project also offers a community Docker image and Kubernetes operators. RabbitMQ can run in cloud or on-premises environments, on local machines and physical or virtual hardware, and in containers. Linux, Windows, and macOS are supported; z/OS, most mainframes, and systems with less than 100 MB of RAM are not. The free, self-managed Open Source RabbitMQ Server is offered under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 with best-effort community support. VMware Tanzu RabbitMQ is a commercial offering with 24/7 support and enterprise features; pricing is by contact.