More comparisons

Amazon SQS vs Azure Event Grid

This Amazon SQS vs Azure Event Grid comparison was created based on reviews from developers and our best attempts to perform analysis by looking at documentation and other publicly available resources.

Easily build complete, trusted realtime functionality.

Take our APIs for a spin

Amazon SQS

Azure Event Grid

Getting started and developer experience

Time to "hello world"

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Ratings were given based on the average amount of time it takes to sign up to a new account and publish the first message.

4 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example
4 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example

Demos / Tutorials

A selection of online demos and tutorials so you can test and see the code in action.

Explore Ably's tutorials for our pub/sub messaging platform

Documentation

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's documentation for our pub/sub messaging platform
4 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

“The information architecture is largely intuitive and helpful, which makes it easy to navigate through docs. From a content perspective, the documentation is good - instructions are generally clear and don’t leave room for interpretation. The getting started guide is easy to follow - if anything, the process is a bit tedious due to the number of steps involved. The code samples are good throughout. Official docs don’t contain a lot of tutorials - there’s barely any. It would have been good to see (more) use case-focused tutorials and demos. You can easily forget about the API reference, which is only listed on the docs homepage, but it’s not referenced in the developer guide at all.”

4.50 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

“Azure Event Grid documentation is well organized in terms of information architecture, and the navigation is intuitive. The docs largely consist of quickstart guides, tutorials, samples, and Event Grid concepts. There’s also a useful comparison page with other similar Azure messaging services - Service Bus and Event Hubs. The tutorials are well written, with print screens and code samples throughout. However, they don’t cover the entire breadth of event sources and handlers that can communicate through Event Grid, which would have been incredibly helpful.“

Dashboard or dev console

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Sign up for free and explore Ably's pub/sub messaging platform
5 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

“The Amazon SQS console allows you to perform queue-related CRUD operations easily. In addition, for each queue, you can manage various settings, such as Lambda triggers, access policy, or encryption. The console also allows you to monitor various metrics, such as the size of messages added to a queue or the number of messages available for retrieval from a queue. The functionality is intuitive, and the dev console is pretty easy to use once you learn your way around it a bit. As a minus, the UI, while simple, is quite boring and dry”.

4.33 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

“Azure Portal allows you to configure and monitor event pipelines built with Event Grid. Adding new events and handlers and managing them is easy enough, and the workflow is intuitive most of the time. You can also configure various logs, metrics, and alerts. All in all, the experience is good, but some tooltips would be good, so you don’t have to dig through the documentation if it’s the first time you’re using the service.“

SDKs

Note: Only official SDKs were taken into account.

Explore Ably's 25+ SDKs for our pub/sub messaging platform

9 SDKs

Including:

  • Ruby

  • .NET

  • JavaScript

6 data plane SDKs

Including:

  • .NET

  • JavaScript

  • Go

API structure

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

4 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

“The Amazon SQS APIs are well described, intuitively named, and overall easy to understand. The API structure is decently consistent and simple across all SDKs. The API reference is well put together and helps you understand all the various operations and actions you can perform.”

4.25 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

“Event Grid APIs are split into data plane APIs and management APIs. The management APIs enable you to create, update, and delete Event Grid topics and subscriptions, while the data plane APIs enable you to post events to topics and consume events. The APIs are largely intuitive and consistent across SDKs. They’re also quite easy to use, but you need to familiarize yourself with them first, as there are tens of operations you can perform.“

Amazon SQS

Azure Event Grid

"Hello world" code example
// SENDING A MESSAGE

// Load the AWS SDK for Node.js
var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
// Set the region 
AWS.config.update({region: 'REGION'});

// Create an SQS service object
var sqs = new AWS.SQS({apiVersion: '2012-11-05'});

var params = {
   // Remove DelaySeconds parameter and value for FIFO queues
  DelaySeconds: 10,
  MessageAttributes: {
    "Title": {
      DataType: "String",
      StringValue: "The Whistler"
    },
    "Author": {
      DataType: "String",
      StringValue: "John Grisham"
    },
    "WeeksOn": {
      DataType: "Number",
      StringValue: "6"
    }
  },
  MessageBody: "Information about current NY Times fiction bestseller for week of 12/11/2016.",
  // MessageDeduplicationId: "TheWhistler",  // Required for FIFO queues
  // MessageGroupId: "Group1",  // Required for FIFO queues
  QueueUrl: "SQS_QUEUE_URL"
};

sqs.sendMessage(params, function(err, data) {
  if (err) {
    console.log("Error", err);
  } else {
    console.log("Success", data.MessageId);
  }
});

// RECEIVING A MESSAGE

// Load the AWS SDK for Node.js
var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
// Set the region
AWS.config.update({region: 'REGION'});

// Create an SQS service object
var sqs = new AWS.SQS({apiVersion: '2012-11-05'});

var queueURL = "SQS_QUEUE_URL";

var params = {
 AttributeNames: [
    "SentTimestamp"
 ],
 MaxNumberOfMessages: 10,
 MessageAttributeNames: [
    "All"
 ],
 QueueUrl: queueURL,
 VisibilityTimeout: 20,
 WaitTimeSeconds: 0
};

sqs.receiveMessage(params, function(err, data) {
  if (err) {
    console.log("Receive Error", err);
  } else if (data.Messages) {
    var deleteParams = {
      QueueUrl: queueURL,
      ReceiptHandle: data.Messages[0].ReceiptHandle
    };
    sqs.deleteMessage(deleteParams, function(err, data) {
      if (err) {
        console.log("Delete Error", err);
      } else {
        console.log("Message Deleted", data);
      }
    });
  }
});
// PUBLISH TO EVENT GRID
function EventGridSample() {
  // TODO: Enter value for topicKey
  let topicKey = 'enter-topic-key';
  // TODO: Enter value for topic-endpoint
  let topicEndPoint = 'enter-topic-endpoint';

  let topicCreds = new msRestAzure.TopicCredentials(topicKey);
  let egClient = new eventGrid(topicCreds);
  let topicUrl = url.parse(topicEndPoint, true);
  let topicHostName = topicUrl.host;
  let currentDate = new Date();
    
  let events = [
    {
      id: uuid(),
      subject: 'Door1',
      dataVersion: '2.0',
      eventType: 'Contoso.Items.ItemReceivedEvent',
      data: {
        itemSku : 'ContosoItemSku'
      },
      eventTime: currentDate
    }
  ];
  egClient.publishEvents(topicHostName, events).then((result) => {
    return Promise.resolve(console.log('Published events successfully.'));
  }).catch((err) => {
    console.log('An error ocurred ' + err);
  });
}

EventGridSample();

// CONSUME FROM EVENT GRID
module.exports = function (context, req) {
    const SubscriptionValidationEvent = "Microsoft.EventGrid.SubscriptionValidationEvent";
    const StorageBlobCreatedEvent = "Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreated";
    const CustomTopicEvent = "Contoso.Items.ItemReceivedEvent";

    var parsedReq = JSON.parse(req['rawBody']);
    context.log('JavaScript HTTP trigger function processed a request.' + parsedReq);

    parsedReq.forEach(eventGridEvent => {
        var eventData = eventGridEvent.data; 
        // Deserialize the event data into the appropriate type based on event type using if/elif/else
        if (eventGridEvent.eventType == SubscriptionValidationEvent) {
            context.log('Got SubscriptionValidation event data, validationCode: ' + eventData.validationCode + ', topic: ' + eventGridEvent.topic); 
            context.res = {
                    validationResponse: eventData.validationCode
            };
        } else if (eventGridEvent.eventType == StorageBlobCreatedEvent) {
            context.log('Got Blobcreated event data, blob URI ' + eventData.url);
        } else if (eventGridEvent.eventType == CustomTopicEvent) {
            context.log('Got ContosoItemReceived event data, item SKU ' + eventData.itemSku);
        }
    });
    
    context.done();
};

Amazon SQS

Azure Event Grid

Realtime features

Pub/Sub messaging

Pub/Sub is a design pattern that lets any number of publishers (producers) push messages to channels (also known as topics). Multiple subscribers (consumers) can subscribe to a channel to consume published messages.

Explore Ably's pub/sub messaging implementation

Message queues

A message queue is a form of asynchronous service-to-service communication. Messages are stored on a queue until they are processed. Note that each message is only consumed by one subscriber (consumer).

Explore Ably's message queues implementation

Presence

Presence enables you to track the online and offline status of devices and end-users in real time and to store their state. Essential for chat apps and multiplayer games.

Explore Ably's presence implementation

Message history

Message history provides a means to retrieve previously published messages. For this to be possible, message data must be stored (persisted) somewhere.

Explore Ably's message history implementation

Connection state recovery (stream resume)

In the case of unreliable network conditions, clients may suddenly disconnect.Connection state recovery ensures that when they reconnect, the data stream resumes exactly where it left off.

Explore Ably' s connection state recovery implementation

Guaranteed message ordering

Ordering ensures that messages are delivered to consumers in the same order that producers publish them.

Explore Ably' s guaranteed message ordering implementation

Exactly-once semantics

Exactly-once is a system-wide data integrity guarantee that ensures each message is delivered to consumers exactly-once.

Explore Ably' s idempotent publishing implementation

Message delta compression

Message delta compression enables you to only send the changes from the previous message to subscribers each time there’s an update, instead of the entire message. Useful for use cases where there is a significant degree of similarity between successive messages.

Explore Ably' s message delta compression implementation

Native push notifications

Native push notifications can be used to deliver messages even when clients are offline. Useful for geolocation updates or news alerts.

Explore Ably's push notifications implementation

Webhooks

Webhooks provide a mechanism to get messages and other types of events (such as clients entering or leaving channels) pushed to your servers over HTTP.

Explore Ably's webhooks implementation

Serverless functions

A serverless function is essentially an isolated, single-purpose piece of code that is only executed when it’ triggered by an event. For example, you can use serverless functions to send a welcome message to clients when they become present on chat channels.

Note that serverless functions are usually fully managed by cloud vendors.

Explore Ably's serverless functions implementation

Limited

Can only trigger AWS Lambda functions. Amazon SQS doesn’t have in-built support for other serverless platforms, such as Azure Functions or Google Cloud Functions. 

Limited

Only integrates with Azure Functions. Event Grid doesn’t have in-built support for other serverless platforms, such as AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions.

Built-in integrations

Which popular services & systems are Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid integrated with?

Explore Ably's library of integrations

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Known limits and constraints

Find out practical limits, such as the maximum message size, or the maximum number of concurrent connections.

Explore the practical limits of the Ably pub/sub messaging platform

Message throughput 

- Standard queues: nearly unlimited  number of API calls per second per API action 

- FIFO queues: 300 API calls per second per API method (3000 transactions per second if you use batching).

Maximum message size

256 KB

Maximum number of queues

Unlimited

Maximum number of connections

By default, a single SQS client has a connection limit of 50 connections. When more than 50 connections are used, the endpoint connections will get queued up, and performance might decrease.

Publisher throughput 

5.000 events/sec or 1 MB/sec (whichever is met first) per topic

Maximum message size

1 MB

Maximum number of topics

100.000 topics per event domain

Maximum number of subscribers

500 subscriptions per topic

Supported development platforms, languages, open protocols and cloud models

Development platforms & operating systems

Which popular development platforms and operating systems do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support via official SDKs?

Explore the development platforms supported by Ably
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET

Languages

Which popular programming languages do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support via offical SDKs?

Explore the programming languages supported by Ably
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala

Open protocols

Which popular open protocols do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support?

Explore the open protocols supported by Ably
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks

Cloud models

Which popular cloud models do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support?

  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
Global and reliable edge service

Edge messaging network with latency-based routing

Latency-based routing ensures that clients are always routed to the nearest datacenter and point of presence.

Explore Ably's routing mechanism that mitigates network and DNS issues

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

Multi-region data replication (storage) protects against single points of failure and ensures message data durability.

Learn how Ably ensures message durability

Uptime SLAs

Here’s what the most common SLAs amount to in terms of downtime over a calendar year:

99.999% SLA = 5m 15s downtime per year

99.99% SLA = 52m 35s downtime per year

99.95% SLA = 4h 22m 58s downtime per year

99.9% SLA = 8h 45m 56s downtime per year

99% SLA = 3d 15h 39m 29s downtime per year

Source: https://uptime.is/

99.9%

99.99%

Quality of Service

What QoS guarantees do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid provide natively?

Explore Ably's availability and uptime guarantees for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
Security

API key authentication

The simplest way to authenticate. Involves using private API keys that you can usually create and edit via a dashboard. Recommended to be used server-side, as private API keys shouldn’t be shared with untrusted parties.

Explore Ably's implementation of API key authentication

Token-based authentication

Which popular token-based authentication mechanisms do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support?

Note that token-based authentication is usually the recommended strategy on the client-side as it provides more fine-grained access control and limits the risk of credentials being compromised.

Explore Ably's implementation of token-based authentication
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs

Configurable rules and permissions

Which types of configurable rules and permissions do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support?

Explore Ably's configurable rules and permissions
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights

Message encryption

Which types of message encryption do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid support?

Explore Ably's message encryption mechanisms
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption

Formal certifications

Which formal certifications are Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid compliant with?

Explore Ably's security and compliance for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
Pricing & Support

Free package

What do the free packages offered by Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid consist of?

Explore Ably's free package for our pub/sub messaging platform

1 million Amazon SQS requests for free each month.

First 100.000 operations free each month.

Pricing model

How are the Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid pricing models calculated?

Explore Ably's pricing model for our pub/sub messaging platform

Beyond the 1 million free Amazon SQS requests each month (which applies to all customers), the monthly cost of requests is calculated as such:

- $0.40 per 1 million requests (Standard Queues)

- $0.50 per 1 million requests (FIFO Queues)

Data transfer out of Amazon SQS is also charged. The first GB / month is free. Pricing varies depending on region and volume of data. For example, in US East (Verizon) - Boston, the price for the next 9.999 TB / month is $0.108 per GB

Azure Event Grid uses a pay-per-use pricing model based on operations performed. 

Operations include ingress of events to Domains or Topics, advanced matches, delivery attempts, and management calls. 

The price per million operations is $0.60 (note that we have used the US as a reference point, but prices may vary across regions).

Enterprise package

What benefits do the Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid enterprise packages offer?

Explore Ably's enterprise package for our pub/sub messaging platform

There is no Amazon SQS - specific enterprise package.

No Enterprise package

Community

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's community support channel for our pub/sub messaging platform
3.50 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

“As we all know, overall, Amazon has a strong and diverse online community that spans various platforms and websites, like Reddit, Stack Overflow, or the AWS forums. With that in mind, the SQS community is not as active or helpful as you’d expect. For example, if you look at the Amazon SQS AWS forum, you will notice there are not that many questions asked over the past year. And while the published questions can get hundreds or even thousands of views, most of them barely have a few replies, if any at all.”  

2 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

“Not much seems to be going on in terms of community. There are around 350 questions on Stack Overflow about Event Grid, but they rarely exceed 30 views, and you're unlikely to find more than one answer to each. It is perhaps one of the lesser-used Azure services”.

Support

What types of support options and response times do Amazon SQS and Azure Event Grid offer?

Explore Ably's support options for our pub/sub messaging platform

General support options

Email, support ticket, phone, technical documentation, community support (e.g. forums or Stack Overflow). 

Enterprise support

Amazon offers an enterprise package, which includes 24/7 phone, email, and chat access to Cloud Support Engineers, Infrastructure Event Management support, and a designated technical account manager.

Response time

< 24 hours for general guidance queries

< 1 hour for Production system down incidents (only applies to Business & Enterprise support packages).

General support options 

Email, support ticket, phone, technical documentation, community support (e.g. forums or StackOverflow). 

Enterprise support

The Professional Direct (ProDirect) plan includes 24/7 support, a Support API (to create & manage support tickets programmatically), and operational & architectural guidance from delivery managers.

Response time

Within 8 business hours for Developer customers

Between 1 and 8 hours initial response time (depending on severity) for Standard and ProDirect customers.

Disclaimer: The information presented for Amazon SQS was last updated on 16 October 2020 and on 24 March 2021 for Azure Event Grid. It is possible that some details may now be out of date. If you think that’s the case, please let us know so we can update them. In any case, you should not rely solely on the information presented here and must check with each provider before deciding to integrate or buy any of these two solutions.


View more comparisons