Side by side
Amazon SQS vs IronMQ
Both stand on message broker software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan APIWeb
Amazon SQS offers Standard and FIFO queues with distinct delivery and ordering behavior, plus batching, retention, and dead-letter handling. The Free Tier includes 1 million requests; account for the listed possible charges for S3 storage, KMS calls, and data transfer.
Visit Amazon SQS
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+1
IronMQ provides multiple queue modes, per-queue ordering, and deployment options for distributed applications. Teams should account for its best-effort one-time delivery model and compare plan request and message-size limits with their needs.
Visit IronMQThe facts
| Amazon SQS | IronMQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Web | API, Linux, Self-hosted, Web |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Entry: $399 a month |
| Plans published | 5 | 5 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | aws.amazon.com | iron.io |
| On message broker software | #14 of 39 | #18 of 39 |
Amazon SQS: what it does well
- Standard queues offer nearly unlimited transactions per second per API action.
- FIFO queues preserve order without introducing duplicates.
- Supports batches of up to 10 messages.
- Dead Letter Queues can receive repeatedly rejected messages.
- Server-side encryption uses AWS KMS keys.
What to know first
- Payloads are limited to 256 KB without the Java Extended Client Library and S3.
- S3 storage, KMS calls, and some data transfers may incur separate charges.
- Unused Free Tier usage does not roll over.
IronMQ: what it does well
- Supports push and pull queues and dead-letter queues
- Failover can redirect queues during outages
- Offers shared, dedicated, and on-premise deployments
What to know first
- Delivery is best-effort and one-time
- Basic limits requests to 100K per month
- 14-day trial is only for non-dedicated clusters
Alternatives to Amazon SQS Alternatives to IronMQ The whole list