Amazon MQ Pricing Calculator - ActiveMQ & RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ is recommended for new applications. RabbitMQ offers modern messaging with AMQP 0.9.1 protocol, better performance for most workloads, and Graviton (ARM) instance support for cost savings. Choose ActiveMQ if you need JMS compatibility, STOMP protocol, or are migrating from an existing ActiveMQ deployment. ActiveMQ also supports cross-region replication for disaster recovery.

Use high availability for production workloads. Single instance mode is suitable for development, testing, or cost-sensitive workloads where downtime is acceptable. For ActiveMQ, Active/Standby deployment provides automatic failover to a standby broker in a different AZ. For RabbitMQ, Cluster deployment runs 3 brokers across availability zones for high availability and message replication.

EBS is recommended for most workloads. EBS storage costs approximately $0.10/GB-month and provides good performance for typical messaging patterns. EFS storage costs approximately $0.30/GB-month (3x more) but offers higher durability for persistent messages. Only use EFS if you need the highest message durability and can justify the cost. Note: EFS is only available for ActiveMQ; RabbitMQ uses EBS exclusively.

Yes, Graviton instances are recommended for RabbitMQ. Graviton-based mq.m7g instances offer approximately 5-10% cost savings compared to equivalent mq.m5 instances, plus better price-performance. They use AWS-designed ARM processors. Graviton instances are currently available for RabbitMQ but not ActiveMQ.

Cross-region replication is available for ActiveMQ only and enables disaster recovery by replicating messages to a broker in another AWS region. It costs $0.10 per hour per broker. If you have a Network of Brokers setup with multiple brokers, the cost multiplies accordingly. Consider this feature for mission-critical applications requiring geographic redundancy.

Network of Brokers is an ActiveMQ feature that connects multiple brokers for distributed messaging. This allows you to scale horizontally and distribute message load across brokers. Each broker in the network is billed independently. Use this for high-throughput scenarios where a single broker cannot handle your message volume.

Data transfer out to the internet uses tiered pricing: $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB, dropping to $0.05/GB above 150 TB. The first 100 GB/month is free. Cross-AZ data transfer (for multi-AZ deployments) costs $0.01/GB in each direction. Data transfer within the same AZ is typically free. Keep your clients in the same AZ as your broker to minimize costs.

Amazon MQ provides a limited free tier: 5 GB of storage per month (applies to both EBS and EFS) and 100 GB of data transfer out per month. There is no free tier for broker instance hours, so you will be charged for any running broker from the first hour.

RabbitMQ cluster mode runs 3 brokers across availability zones for high availability and message replication. The cluster price shown is the combined cost of all 3 brokers. This provides automatic failover, message mirroring, and no single point of failure. The 3-broker architecture is required for RabbitMQ high availability on Amazon MQ.

Use Amazon MQ when migrating existing applications that use standard messaging protocols (AMQP, STOMP, MQTT, OpenWire). Use Amazon SQS for new cloud-native applications that need a fully managed, serverless queue. Use Amazon SNS for pub/sub messaging. SQS and SNS are typically more cost-effective for new applications without legacy protocol requirements.