SQS Standard vs FIFO Queues
Compare Standard queues for maximum throughput with FIFO queues for ordered, exactly-once processing, and choose the right type.
Why Message Queues Matter
Message queues decouple producers from consumers: a producer sends a message to the queue without waiting for a consumer to process it. The consumer processes messages at its own pace. This pattern prevents fast producers from overwhelming slow consumers, enables independent scaling of each tier, and provides a durable buffer if the consumer is temporarily unavailable. Amazon SQS is AWS's fully managed, highly available message queuing service.
SQS Standard Queue Characteristics
Standard queues offer unlimited throughput (nearly unlimited transactions per second). They guarantee at-least-once delivery—a message may be delivered more than once in rare cases (due to distributed infrastructure). Message order is best-effort: messages are generally delivered in the order sent but not guaranteed. Standard queues are ideal when throughput is critical and your consumer can handle occasional duplicates and out-of-order delivery.
# Create a Standard queue
aws sqs create-queue \
--queue-name 'OrderProcessingQueue'
# Send a message
aws sqs send-message \
--queue-url 'https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/123456789012/OrderProcessingQueue' \
--message-body 'OrderId-12345'