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Amazon EventBridge vs Amazon SQS

Discover how Amazon EventBridge compares to Amazon SQS, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.

Amazon EventBridge logo

What is Amazon EventBridge?

Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that enables real-time response to state changes in your applications. Using an event bus, it collects data from multiple sources, processes and routes them between other AWS services or external SaaS providers. This simplifies the building of scalable and loosely coupled systems in event-driven architectures.

Amazon SQS logo

What is Amazon SQS?

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed messaging queuing service which enables decoupling and scaling of distributed systems. It is secure, reliable, and suitable for handling asynchronous communication between software components, which ensures that messages are not lost and are processed efficiently.

Compare Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS

Let’s compare Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS, looking at key dimensions such as their core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Disclaimer:This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS. The content was last updated on 1 Aug 2024 for Amazon EventBridge and on 16 Aug 2024 for Amazon SQS. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.

Core features
Pub/Sub messaging

Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

No

AWS SQS is a queueing system and not a pub/sub messaging system.

Chat capabilities

Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

No

Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

No

State sync capabilities

Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Partial

AWS SQS can be implemented with AWS AppSync which supports real-time data synchronization using GraphQL subscriptions. This allows UI updates to reflect changes in the underlying data store (like DynamoDB or other databases) without the need for polling.

Presence

Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

Partial

Partially supported, requiring integration with other AWS services.

Occupancy

High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

No

Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

No

Message history

Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Partial

Amazon S3 can be used to archive past messages, while AWS AppSync can facilitate retrieving messages and syncing them with UI updates. However, managing message history may require additional custom development or integration.

Push notifications

Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge does not support native push notifications. Notifications can be sent to communication channels by integrating with AWS Chatbot.

Amazon SQS

Partial

Amazon SQS can be integrated with AWS SNS to deliver push notifications based on events.

Message delta compression

Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

No

Programmatic management

Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

AWS provides comprehensive APIs and SDKs for programmatic management of its services.

Pricing
Free plan

With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Free access to AWS default service events for event buses. Custom events, third-party SaaS, and cross-account events are paid.

Amazon SQS

Yes

The Amazon SQS Free Tier offers up to 1 million requests per month at no cost for all customers for both standard and FIFO Queues.

Pricing model

The pricing model should align with your project's expected load, usage patterns, and budget in order to be cost-effective and efficient.

Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge has a limited free tier and a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of events published to EventBridge, the number of invocations, events replayed, and schema discovery. The cost varies based on the event type. You can read more about the pricing plan on Amazon's website.

Amazon SQS

AWS SQS has a free tier and pay-as-you-go pricing model based on usage (number of queue requests and data transfer).

Read more
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.

Amazon EventBridge
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • .NET
  • Kotlin
  • Python
  • C++
  • Ruby
Amazon SQS
  • C++
  • Go
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Kotlin
  • .NET
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Rust
  • Swift
Supported realtime protocols

Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.

Amazon EventBridge
  • HTTPS
  • Webhooks
Amazon SQS
  • HTTP/HTTPS
  • Amazon SQS Long Polling
Serverless functions

Enables integration with third-party cloud providers by facilitating the execution of custom code against messages to perform business logic like on-the-fly translation.

Amazon EventBridge
  • AWS Lambda
Amazon SQS

None natively; serverless functions are available through integration with AWS Lambda.

Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Available through Amazon SQS.

Amazon SQS

Yes

Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics.

Amazon SQS

Partial

AWS SQS provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics.

CI/CD tools

Makes it possible to provision and configure service infrastructure as part of a CI or CD pipeline, enabling repeatable and reliable deployments.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
  • AWS CodeBuild
  • AWS CodeDeploy
Amazon SQS

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodeCommit
  • AWS CodeBuild
  • AWS CodePipeline
  • AWS CodeDeploy
Quality of Service
Scalability

Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance.

Amazon EventBridge

No published metrics are available.

Amazon SQS

No published metrics are available.

Guaranteed message delivery

Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge promises at-least-once event delivery. It will try to deliver an event to a target for up to 24 hours.

Amazon SQS

Yes

AWS SQS provides robust support for guaranteed message delivery, ensuring that each message is reliably delivered to its intended recipient.

Guaranteed message ordering

Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

Yes

For AWS SQS FIFO Queues, messages are delivered in the exact order they are sent, following a strict First-In-First-Out (FIFO) sequence.

Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon EventBridge does not support exactly-once delivery semantics out of the box. It ensures at least-once delivery, but does not guarantee exactly-once delivery.

Amazon SQS

Yes

When using AWS SQS FIFO Queues, messages are delivered exactly once with no duplication.

Performance & availability
Uptime Guarantee

An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime.

Amazon EventBridge

99.99%.

Read more
Amazon SQS

99.9%.

Read more
Global edge network

By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SQS

Partial

AWS SQS provides high message durability within a single AWS region by replicating messages across multiple Availability Zones. But it does not natively support cross-region replication. For multi-region data replication, you can use additional strategies, such as using AWS services like AWS Lambda or AWS Data Pipeline to replicate messages from SQS queues in one region to SQS queues in another region.

No single point of failure or congestion

Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

Messages in AWS SQS are distributed across various availability zones in a region, ensuring high availability and scalability.

Latency

Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.

Amazon EventBridge

500ms global average latency

Read more
Amazon SQS

Latencies for SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, and DeleteMessage API requests range from tens to low hundreds of milliseconds.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

Token-based authentication

Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge uses the AWS STS (Security Token Service) for token-based authentication.

Amazon SQS

No

AWS SQS does not directly support token-based authentication. Instead, AWS SQS relies on AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for authentication and authorization.

Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through AWS SSO.

Amazon SQS

Yes

Rules for permissions and operations

Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

End-to-end encryption

Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

Encryption at rest

Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SQS

Yes

AWS SQS supports encryption at rest using AWS KMS (Key Management Service).

Compliance

Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry.

Amazon EventBridge
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
Amazon SQS
  • PCI DSS Level 1 certified
  • HIPAA-eligible

Alternatives to Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS

While both Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS are worth considering as options for realtime experiences, they aren’t without their limitations. We suggest evaluating them against the following alternatives to make sure you find the right solution for your needs.

Alternatives to Amazon EventBridge

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TriggerMesh is a free and open-source AWS EventBridge alternative.

Azure-event-grid logo

Azure Event Grid is a Pub/Sub message routing service for creating event-driven architectures using MQTT and HTTP protocols.

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Confluent Kafka is a scalable and distributed streaming platform that enables real-time data communications.

See more alternatives to Amazon EventBridge

Alternatives to Amazon SQS

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RabbitMQ is the open-source message broker supporting multiple messaging protocols.

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ActiveMQ is an open-source message broker with support for multiple protocols, offering high availability and scalability for enterprise messaging.

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Apache Kafka is an open-source realtime data streaming platform.

See more alternatives to Amazon SQS

Discover how Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SQS on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Try Ably for free to discover the benefits for yourself

Ably has built reliable realtime infrastructure so you don’t have to. On our free plan you benefit from:

  • 6M monthly messages
  • 200 concurrent channels
  • 200 concurrent connections