Amazon SQS vs Azure Service Bus vs GCP Pub/Sub
![]() |
Amazon SQS vs Azure Service Bus vs GCP Pub/Sub | Image credit: Pexel |
Message queues enable decoupling between microservices and help in building scalable, event-driven architectures. Leading cloud providers offer managed messaging queue solutions—Amazon SQS, Azure Service Bus, and Google Cloud Pub/Sub. This post dives deep into each, with an SEO-optimized analysis of their features, similarities, and differences.
Key features of Amazon SQS
- Fully managed message queuing for microservices and serverless apps
- Supports Standard (at-least-once) and FIFO (exactly-once) queues
- Message size up to 256 KB, extended to 2 GB with S3
- Integrates with Lambda, ECS, S3, and SNS
- Dead-letter queues, message delay, and batching supported
- Access control with IAM policies
- Event logging and monitoring via CloudWatch
- Amazon SQS Documentation
Key features of Azure Service Bus
- Supports both queue and publish-subscribe (topic) patterns
- Standard and Premium tiers with message deduplication and sessions
- Advanced message filtering and rule-based routing
- Dead-lettering, auto-forwarding, and scheduled delivery
- Built-in retries and duplicate detection
- Fully managed and supports hybrid cloud integration
- Native integration with Logic Apps, Azure Functions, and Event Grid
- Azure Service Bus Documentation
Key features of Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- Global, scalable message-oriented middleware
- Publisher-subscriber model with durable message storage
- At-least-once delivery with exactly-once in Lite version
- Integrates with Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and Dataflow
- Supports push and pull message delivery models
- Schema validation, message filtering, and ordering (with Lite)
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub Documentation
What is similar in Amazon SQS vs Azure Service Bus vs GCP Pub/Sub
- All are fully managed, cloud-native solutions for asynchronous messaging
- Support high throughput and elastic scalability
- Provide dead-letter queues, retries, and monitoring
- Can be integrated with event-driven compute services
- Support for secure messaging using IAM, roles, and encryption
What is different in Amazon SQS vs Azure Service Bus vs GCP Pub/Sub
- Protocol Support: SQS is purely queue-based (FIFO and Standard); Azure supports queues and topics with rich routing; Pub/Sub uses a true publish-subscribe model with global scale
- Ordering: SQS supports strict ordering with FIFO queues; Azure uses sessions for ordering; Pub/Sub offers message ordering only in Lite tier
- Advanced Filtering: Azure Service Bus provides SQL-like filters; Pub/Sub supports attribute-based filtering; SQS filtering is limited via SNS
- Delivery Model: SQS and Service Bus use pull models primarily; Pub/Sub supports both push and pull
- Latency and Global Reach: Pub/Sub has lowest latency and globally replicated delivery; SQS is region-based; Service Bus is optimized for enterprise workloads
Conclusion
For a simple, scalable queue system tightly integrated with AWS services, Amazon SQS is ideal. If you're looking for enterprise-grade features like message sessions and advanced routing, Azure Service Bus is the right fit. For global-scale event distribution and real-time analytics integration, choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub. Your final choice should align with ecosystem integration needs, ordering guarantees, and messaging complexity.