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ActiveMQ vs MuleSoft Anypoint Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (1st), Workload Automation (4th), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 26.1%, up from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is 8.9%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

Eyob Alemu - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient data flow management with high performance and occasional stability improvements
For high traffic volumes where management time on ActiveMQ is minimal and where the rate of flow from the provider is slower than from the consumer, ActiveMQ offers the highest performance based on our experience. It has been efficient for data flow control between two endpoints, despite occasional unexpected glitches. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Tolulope A. Adeniji - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides application integration and reduces time and effort during upgrades
One of the most valuable aspects was its impact on reducing time and effort during upgrades. Previously, SAP upgrades required significant coordination with multiple teams. Now, thanks to our streamlined integration approach, the SAP team interacts primarily with the integration team. When changes are needed, we simply create a new version. This allows application teams to migrate gradually from the old version to the new one, without extensive involvement from the SAP team. Moreover, our approach has improved reliability by eliminating duplicated efforts. Previously, different teams would often duplicate data sets due to inefficiencies in data naming conventions. We centralized data integration, ensuring that all applications use the same data set.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It’s a JMS broker, so the fact that it can allow for asynchronous communication is valuable."
"ActiveMQ is very lightweight and quick."
"I appreciate many features including queue, topic, durable topic, and selectors. I also value a different support for different protocols such as MQTT and AMQP. It has full support for EIP, REST, Message Groups, UDP, and TCP."
"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"It provides the best support services."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"The most important feature is that it's best for JVM-related languages and JMS integration."
"Message broadcasting: There could be a use case sending the same message to all consumers. So as a producer, I broadcast the message to a topic. Then, whichever consumers are subscribed to the topic can consume the same message."
"I have found several things most valuable, including its very quick implementation that you can use a lot of out of the box templates, and lastly that it is a very mature product, especially in hybrid integration."
"The tool’s API management capabilities are excellent."
"Initially, we faced challenges managing numerous scheduled jobs and duplicate entries in our SAP system. To address this, we developed a reusable component in Mule that all applications could use to interact with SAP."
"The product’s ability to seamlessly translate protocols is great."
"It reduces manual loads in maintaining servers as it comes with the Cloud Hub feature."
"When we talk about the APIs, there are multiple policies one can apply on APIs, like rate limiting policies, OWASP policies, and OWASP security policies, that can be easily configured in Mule Anypoint Platform."
"The solution's deployment and proxy processes are very good."
"This is a good platform for designing, flowing out APIs, and then doing API-based integrations."
 

Cons

"Distributed message processing would be a nice addition."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"We need to enhance stability and improve the deployment optimization to fully leverage the platform's capabilities."
"The solution's stability needs improvement."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"One potential area would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."
"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."
"The initial setup should be made easy and the documentation should have some guidance."
"Its documentation needed a little bit of work to make it more usable. It is a platform that is used mainly by developers and other people for connecting systems. Its documentation was confusing in some areas and was not very helpful in other areas. I had to go to a consultant to get some work done, which ideally shouldn't be required."
"Anypoint MQ's capabilities are mainly used for messaging purposes, but it doesn't have typical use cases that extend as far as other Message Queue software."
"The solution's licensing methodologies could be improved."
"This becomes an expensive solution over time."
"The solution's pricing model is very strange, and it will be really expensive if you use APIs a lot."
"One area for improvement is the Community Hub or developer portal, which should be part of the base offering."
"Mule Anypoint Platform could improve by having more up-to-date adapters to do work in a digital space."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"We use the open-source version."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"I think the software is free."
"The product is still very expensive."
"The licensing is core-based. My customers tell me that it's very expensive compared to the cost of other integration suites."
"The tool's pricing is cheaper than other RPAs' since it is execution-based. Other RPAs charge based on subscriptions."
"MuleSoft Anypoint Platform really needs to work on its pricing model because it's very complicated."
"The solution's pricing, as per the old approach, is expensive."
"Mule Anypoint Platform pricing is slightly higher compared to Dell Boomi."
"Regarding pricing, I believe there could be room for improvement to align with user expectations."
"The solution is the priciest in the market which is an issue for some clients."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.
What advice do you have for others considering Mule Anypoint Platform?
I architected solutions using Oracle SOA/OSB, Spring Boot, MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes; What I see is though if you are an enterprise and have enough money th...
How does TIBCO BusinessWorks compare with Mule Anypoint Platform?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether TIBCO BusinessWorks or Mule Anypoint platform integration and connectivity software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mule...
What can Mule Anypoint Platform be used for and what do you use it for most often?
This is a very flexible solution that comes with multiple uses. My organization mostly uses Mule Anypoint Platform for API management, as it lets us build new APIs easily and design new interfaces...
 

Also Known As

AMQ
Data Integrator, Anypoint MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
VMware, Gucci, MasterCard, Target, Time Inc, Hershey's, Tesla, Spotify, Office Depot, Intuit, CBS, Amtrak, Salesforce, Gap, Ralph Lauren
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveMQ vs. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.