# Amazon SQS vs Apache Pulsar

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Apache Pulsar

| Attribute | Amazon SQS | Apache Pulsar |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 51.9 (72% (medium)) | 60.2 (38% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 316 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 15,343 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Amazon Bedrock is a managed AWS service that provides API access to foundation models from providers like Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI, and Amazon. It supports on-demand and batch inference, model fine-tuning, knowledge bases, agentic retrieval, and data automation for enterprise AI workloads. It is indexed under Message Queues.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"What is Amazon SQS?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Amazon SQS is a paid product; published pricing starts at $0.00. It is sold across 3 plans (Standard, Batch and Fine-tuning). There is no free tier. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"How much does Amazon SQS cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Amazon SQS supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"What platforms does Amazon SQS support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Amazon SQS, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"Can Amazon SQS be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 4 integrations for Amazon SQS, including S3, SharePoint, Confluence and CloudWatch. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"What does Amazon SQS integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed HIPAA and GDPR for Amazon SQS. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Amazon SQS not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/trust-center/?nc1=f_cc","question":"What security certifications does Amazon SQS have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Amazon SQS is available worldwide. The vendor is headquartered in the United States.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","question":"Where is Amazon SQS available?","confidence":0.75}]` | `[{"answer":"A distributed messaging system built for cloud deployments that enables applications to reliably publish and consume messages—either individually or as continuous streams—with sub-10-millisecond latency, supporting millions of independent topics and large-scale streaming workloads. It is indexed under Message Queues.","source":"https://pulsar.apache.org","question":"What is Apache Pulsar?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Pulsar is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://pulsar.apache.org","question":"Is Apache Pulsar free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Pulsar supports a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://pulsar.apache.org","question":"What platforms does Apache Pulsar support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Pulsar can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://pulsar.apache.org","question":"Can Apache Pulsar be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 27 integrations for Apache Pulsar, including Kafka, RabbitMQ, MongoDB, Cassandra, Elasticsearch, HBase, HDFS and InfluxDB, plus 19 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://pulsar.apache.org","question":"What does Apache Pulsar integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Pulsar is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar","question":"Is Apache Pulsar open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Amazon Bedrock is a managed AWS service that provides API access to foundation models from providers like Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI, and Amazon. It supports on-demand and batch inference, model fine-tuning, knowledge bases, agentic retrieval, and data automation for enterprise AI workloads. | A message broker supporting both pub-sub and queue-based messaging patterns. It provides durable storage with strong ordering guarantees, horizontally scales to millions of topics and messages per second, and supports geo-replication for distributed deployments. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"cloud","ordering":"none","paradigm":"queue","message_replay":false,"persistent_log":true,"consumer_groups":true,"managed_offering":true,"dead_letter_queue":true,"delivery_guarantee":"at_least_once","horizontal_scaling":true}` | `{"hosting":"both","ordering":"per_partition","paradigm":"pubsub","protocol":"pulsar://","message_replay":true,"persistent_log":true,"consumer_groups":true,"geo_replication":true,"kafka_compatible":true,"stream_processing":true,"delivery_guarantee":"exactly_once","horizontal_scaling":true}` |
| integrations.count | 4 | 35 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"S3","native":true,"category":"storage","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"SharePoint","native":true,"category":"collaboration","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Confluence","native":true,"category":"collaboration","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"CloudWatch","native":true,"category":"observability","direction":"bidirectional"}]` | `[{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"RabbitMQ"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Cassandra"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"HBase"},{"name":"HDFS"},{"name":"InfluxDB"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Solr"},{"name":"DynamoDB"},{"name":"Kinesis"},{"name":"Azure Data Explorer"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"MariaDB"},{"name":"SQLite"},{"name":"Debezium MySQL"},{"name":"Debezium PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Debezium MongoDB"},{"name":"Debezium Oracle"},{"name":"Debezium Microsoft SQL Server"},{"name":"Canal"},{"name":"Aerospike"},{"name":"Alluxio"},{"name":"NSQ"},{"name":"Netty"},{"name":"HTTP"},{"name":"File"},{"name":"Kafka Connect Adaptor","native":true,"direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"MySQL","native":true}]` |
| language.primary | - | Java |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Standard","features":["On-demand inference","Token-based pricing"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"token"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.00001,"currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Batch","features":["Batch inference at 50% discount versus on-demand"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"token"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.000005,"currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Fine-tuning","features":["Hourly training workflow billing","Token-based on-demand inference after training"],"contactSales":false}],"addOns":[{"name":"Knowledge Base","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"page"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Data Automation","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"page"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Human Evaluation","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"task"},"kind":"per_unit","amount":0.21,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Agentic Retrieval with Custom LLM","components":[{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"retrieve API calls"},"kind":"metered","amount":1,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"Usage-based pricing. Token-metered inference starting at on-demand rates; batch at 50% discount. Hourly training fees. Add-ons: Knowledge Base and Data Automation at $0.01/page. Human evaluation $0.21/task.","currency":"USD","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_br","retrievedAt":"2026-09-04T11:08:16.979Z","startingPrice":{"unit":"token","amount":0.000005,"currency":"USD"}}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://pulsar.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:35:49.214Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | no | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | low | free |
| pricing.starting_price | `{"amount":0.000005,"currency":"USD"}` | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | - | 3 |
| release.history | - | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v5.0.0","date":"2026-10-05T19:22:24Z","type":"stable","version":"v5.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.5","date":"2026-10-05T19:23:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.14","date":"2026-10-05T19:23:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v5.0.0-M2","date":"2026-09-16T23:33:14Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v5.0.0-M2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.4","date":"2026-08-03T09:19:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.13","date":"2026-08-03T09:19:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.3","date":"2026-07-06T08:46:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.12","date":"2026-07-06T08:46:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v5.0.0-M1","date":"2026-06-23T14:11:26Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v5.0.0-M1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.2","date":"2026-06-08T18:16:45Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.11","date":"2026-06-08T18:16:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.1","date":"2026-04-27T13:04:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.10","date":"2026-04-27T13:04:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v3.0.17","date":"2026-04-27T13:03:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.2.0","date":"2026-03-31T21:12:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.1.3","date":"2026-02-19T19:48:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.9","date":"2026-02-19T19:48:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v3.0.16","date":"2026-02-16T09:24:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.1.2","date":"2025-11-17T07:58:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/pulsar/releases/tag/v4.0.8","date":"2025-11-17T07:58:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.8"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 7.1 |
| security.trust_center | https://aws.amazon.com/security/?nc1=f_cc | https://pulsar.apache.org/docs/5.0.x/security-athenz/ |
| security.vulnerabilities | - | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.pulsar%3Apulsar-client-admin&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Message Queues)

| Capability | Amazon SQS | Apache Pulsar |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Messaging paradigm | Queue | Pub/sub |
| **Correctness** |  |  |
| Delivery guarantee | At-least-once | Exactly-once |
| Ordering guarantee | None | Per-partition |
| **Durability** |  |  |
| Durable replayable log | ✓ | ✓ |
| Message replay / rewind | ✗ | ✓ |
| **Interop** |  |  |
| Wire protocol | - | pulsar:// |
| Kafka-protocol compatible | - | ✓ |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Partitioned horizontal scaling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Geo / cross-region replication | - | ✓ |
| **Consumption** |  |  |
| Consumer groups / competing consumers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dead-letter queue | ✓ | - |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Managed cloud offering exists | ✓ | - |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud + self-hosted |
| **Processing** |  |  |
| Built-in stream processing | - | ✓ |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-15T21:21:17.712Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*
