EventBridge Vs SQS Vs SNS
Amazon EventBridge, SNS, and SQS are all AWS messaging and event services, but they serve different purposes and use cases
EventBridge​
Amazon EventBridge is an event bus service designed for event-driven architectures. It acts as a central hub that receives events from various sources (AWS services, custom applications, SaaS providers) and routes them to multiple targets based on rules. EventBridge is ideal for building loosely coupled, serverless applications where you need to react to events happening across your system. It supports event filtering, transformation, and can integrate with over 90 AWS services as both sources and targets.
SNS​
Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a pub/sub messaging service that delivers messages from publishers to subscribers. It's designed for fan-out scenarios where you want to send the same message to multiple recipients simultaneously. SNS supports various delivery protocols including email, SMS, HTTP/HTTPS endpoints, and SQS queues. It's particularly useful for notifications, alerts, and broadcasting messages to multiple consumers.
Amazon SQS​
Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a message queuing service that provides reliable, scalable message queues for decoupling application components. SQS stores messages in queues until consumers retrieve and process them. It's perfect for asynchronous processing, workload distribution, and ensuring messages aren't lost even if consumers are temporarily unavailable. SQS offers both standard queues (best-effort ordering, at-least-once delivery) and FIFO queues (strict ordering, exactly-once processing).
Comparsion EventBridge, Amazon SNS, and Amazon SQS​
| Aspect | Amazon EventBridge | Amazon SNS | Amazon SQS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Pattern | Event routing & filtering | Publish/Subscribe (Pub/Sub) | Message queuing |
| Main Use Case | Event-driven architectures, application integration | Notifications, broadcasting, fan-out messaging | Asynchronous processing, workload distribution |
| Message Flow | Many sources → Event bus → Many targets (based on rules) | Publisher → Topic → Multiple subscribers | Producer → Queue → Consumer(s) |
| Opensource Alternatives | - Apache Kafka | - Apache Kafka - Redis Pub/Sub | - Apache Kafka - **RabbitMQ** |
Key Similarities:
- All support encryption at rest and in transit
- All integrate with AWS IAM for access control
- All offer high availability and durability
- All support Cloud Watch monitoring and logging
When to Use Each:
- EventBridge: When you need sophisticated event routing between multiple services and applications
- SNS: When you need to notify multiple subscribers about the same event immediately
- SQS: When you need reliable message storage and processing with the ability to handle failures gracefully
Common Architecture Pattern: EventBridge receives events → triggers SNS for notifications → SNS delivers to SQS queues for background processing.