# poundifdef/smoothmq

An improved drop-in replacement for SQS

Repository: https://github.com/poundifdef/smoothmq
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/smoothmq
Language: Go
License: AGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: message-queue, messaging, queue, sqs
Last push: 2025-02-18T13:29:50+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 18/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 7, release rhythm 8, longevity 58
- inputs: {"age_days": 825, "days_push": 561, "days_rel": 726, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2286, forks 52 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:34.115395+00:00)

## What it is
SmoothMQ is a drop-in replacement for Amazon SQS that runs as a single Go binary on any cloud or self-hosted environment. It works with any existing SQS client and adds a management UI, observability, tracing, message scheduling, and rate-limiting.

## Use cases
- run a private SQS-compatible message queue on my own infrastructure
- replace SQS in development without changing application code
- search and inspect individual messages in a queue via a UI
- schedule delayed messages in an SQS-compatible queue
- rate-limit message consumption per queue
- use Celery or boto3 with a self-hosted SQS endpoint

## When to choose
- you want SQS API compatibility without AWS dependency or cost
- you need queue observability, tracing, and a management dashboard
- you want a simple single-binary deployment for local dev or private cloud
- your existing SQS clients (boto3, Celery, any SDK) should work unchanged

## When to avoid
- you need full SQS feature parity such as FIFO queues with all guarantees
- you require a managed, highly available multi-node queue at massive scale
- AGPL-3.0 licensing is incompatible with your usage
- you need non-SQS protocols like AMQP or Kafka

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: message-queue, monitoring, tracing, rate-limiting, scheduling, self-hosted
- domain: developer-tools, self-hosted, infrastructure-as-code
- platform: windows, self-hosted, go, cli
- tags: sqs-compatible, drop-in-replacement, queue-management, single-binary, message-search, messaging, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- poundifdef/smoothmq (main) score 18

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:34.115395+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:40:53.917359+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/poundifdef/smoothmq (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:34.115395+00:00, sha a75b872bf020)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.