Amazon SQS vs Cloudflare Durable Objects
Discover how Amazon SQS compares to Cloudflare Durable Objects , and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
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.
Suitable for:
- Scaling microservices
- Message processing
- Transaction processing
- Job queues
Not suitable for:
- Long message retention
- Large message sizes
Pros:
- Message locking
- Near infinite scalability
- Reliable delivery
- Dead-letter queues
- Reduced overhead
Cons:
- High cost at scale
- Vendor lock-in
- No support for routing
- Short message retention
What is Cloudflare Durable Objects ?
Cloudflare Durable Objects provides an easy way to manage stateful objects with low-latency access and real-time updates. It enables developers to create collaborative, real-time applications using WebSocket connections, ensuring data persistence and consistent performance across distributed clients.
Suitable for:
- Collaboration tools
- Multiplayer games
- Chat applications
- Editing tools
- Realtime leaderboard applications
Not suitable for:
- Heavy computations tasks
- Large datasets
- Offline-first applications
- Legacy systems
- High-latency tolerance
Pros:
- Globally distributed
- Reliable performance
- Low latency
- Scalable
Cons:
- No free plan
- Cost at scale
- Limited customizability
- Learning curve
Compare Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects
Let’s compare Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects , 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 SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects . The content was last updated on 16 Aug 2024 for Amazon SQS and on 2 Aug 2024 for Cloudflare Durable Objects . 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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 SQS No AWS SQS is a queueing system and not a pub/sub messaging system. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects does not have built-in pub/sub. However, Cloudflare has an MQTT-powered pub/sub service in private beta which can be integrated with Durable Objects. Read more |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Amazon SQS No | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects can implement some chat features, but some require additional Cloudflare services or custom development. File sharing would require integration with Cloudflare R2 for file storage. |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Amazon SQS No | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects can support collaboration capabilities, but require integration with storage services like Cloudflare Workers KV for features like avatar stacks and location data. |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes |
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | Amazon SQS Partial Partially supported, requiring integration with other AWS services. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects does not natively support presence; it requires custom implementation. |
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 SQS No | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Amazon SQS No | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Amazon SQS Partial Amazon SQS can be integrated with AWS SNS to deliver push notifications based on events. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Amazon SQS No | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects supports the Brotli and gzip compression algorithms for all responses, rather than delta compression. |
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS provides comprehensive APIs and SDKs for programmatic management of its services. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Programmatic management is possible through the Durable Objects REST API. |
| 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 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Cloudflare Durable Objects is only available on a pay-as-you-go plan. The plan offers 1 million requests and then $0.15/million requests. Connections to Durable Objects are billed as one request. Read more |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Amazon SQS
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
|
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Amazon SQS
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
|
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 SQS None natively; serverless functions are available through integration with AWS Lambda. | Cloudflare Durable Objects
|
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Amazon SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects itself doesn't directly support specific message brokers or streaming platforms. Instead, it provides a runtime environment where you can implement your own logic. |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Amazon SQS Partial AWS SQS provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial For observability, Cloudflare Durable Objects can be integrated with Baselime, or can be retrieved with Cloudflare's GraphQL Analytics API. Read more |
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 SQS Yes Supports:
| Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Supports:
|
| Quality of Service | |||
Scalability | Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance. | Amazon SQS No published metrics are available. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Durable Objects scale horizontally across many objects as needed. Each single object can handle up to 1,000 requests per second. Read more |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS SQS provides robust support for guaranteed message delivery, ensuring that each message is reliably delivered to its intended recipient. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve guaranteed message delivery. Read more |
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 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve guaranteed message ordering. Read more |
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 SQS Yes When using AWS SQS FIFO Queues, messages are delivered exactly once with no duplication. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve exactly-once message delivery. Read more |
| 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 SQS 99.9%. Read more | Cloudflare Durable Objects Cloudflare offers Business customers a 100% uptime SLA with service credits for any failures, while Enterprise customers have separate agreements. 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 SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Read more |
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 SQS Yes Messages in AWS SQS are distributed across various availability zones in a region, ensuring high availability and scalability. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes |
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 SQS Latencies for SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, and DeleteMessage API requests range from tens to low hundreds of milliseconds. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Amazon SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Amazon SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | Amazon SQS Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Data in transit is encrypted via TLS/SSL. |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Amazon SQS Yes AWS SQS supports encryption at rest using AWS KMS (Key Management Service). | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Cloudflare encrypts all users' data at rest using the AES-256 standard. |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Amazon SQS
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
|
Alternatives to Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects
Whilst both Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects 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 SQS
RabbitMQ is the open-source message broker supporting multiple messaging protocols.
ActiveMQ is an open-source message broker with support for multiple protocols, offering high availability and scalability for enterprise messaging.
Apache Kafka is an open-source real-time data streaming platform.
Alternatives to Cloudflare Durable Objects
Amazon API Gateway is a service for building, deploying, and managing APIs.
AWS AppSync enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in real-time across multiple devices and users.
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. Serving more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform on earth. Businesses trust us to power their critical applications - reliably, securely and at serious scale.
Discover how Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon SQS and Cloudflare Durable Objects 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
