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Apache Airflow vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Apache Airflow
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
30th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Apache Airflow is 3.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache Airflow3.4%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM0.9%
Other95.7%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2754210 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Open workflows have simplified data ingestion and curation but still need better UI and scheduler resilience
I think there could be improvements or enhancements in Apache Airflow in terms of having a better UI experience. The UX can be done a bit better. The web interface of Apache Airflow has helped me in tracking and troubleshooting since I'm operational and part of the operational side of Apache Airflow. Mostly, I go into the logs of the web server and scheduler to check what's happening in the back-end instead of looking at the front-end. The UI can give errors related to pipelines, but it can be more improved if we get errors related to import errors and scheduling errors. These areas can be improved. Other than a better UI experience, I would want to see improvements in the scheduler. Sometimes, for user-made mistakes, the scheduler goes down. I experienced this issue and I'm not sure whether it got fixed right now or not. If a user is building a data pipeline in Apache Airflow and a user makes a mistake in their code, that makes the scheduler go down and eventually Apache Airflow goes down. That is not what is expected. If that gets fixed, then it can do wonders.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration Lead at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Powerful workflow definition enhances operational stability and efficiency
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows. It is low code, so you don't need a lot of coding, and tasks are just drag and drop. It is also very stable as we haven't had issues with it going down or encountering any operational issues for a long time. The stability and rich features in workflow definition make it a valuable tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of its most valuable features is the graphical user interface, providing a visual representation of the pipeline status, successes, failures, and informative developer messages."
"The best feature is the customization."
"Its user-friendly interface makes it straightforward to operate, offering a plethora of features for data preparation, buffering, and format conversion."
"The solution's UI allows me to collect all the information and see the code lines."
"I like the UI rework, it's much easier."
"Since it's widely adopted by the community, Apache Airflow is a user-friendly solution."
"Airflow integrates well with Cloudera and effectively supports complex operations."
"I would rate Apache Airflow from one to ten points overall as ten points, which means it is a very good solution."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"It is the best product because of its stability. ActiveMatrix 5.x is highly stable in production, and the downtime is very low. I have worked on a lot of service projects, and the engine is very stable, robust, and scalable. The development and change requests can be pushed quickly, and the mapper activity and SSLT kind of features are also good. It is easy to do changes, testing, and deployment. Its deployment is very easy, and we can automate a lot of scripts for our on-premises solution. I work for an investment bank, and we have automated a lot of processes for our customers. Previously, we used to develop scripts and tools. With version 6.x, everything is moved to Maven and other things. Environment handling is done mostly through DevOps tools. As compared to Mulesoft, the deployment and configuration are very easy in TIBCO."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"For specific situations this can be a good solution and a simplified interface to work with."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The scheduling and the calendar are very useful."
"The capacity for distributing the jobs in a workflow is an important feature."
 

Cons

"Enhancements become necessary when scaling it up from a few thousand workflows to a more extensive scale of five thousand or ten thousand workflows."
"I have some issues with the solution's communication."
"The problem with Apache Airflow is that it is an open-source tool. You have to build it into a Kubernetes container, which is not easy to maintain, and I find it to be very clunky."
"The UI is a little bit outdated according to modern standards."
"Adding more automated components in Apache Airflow for basic things like exporting the data would be helpful."
"We cannot run real-time jobs in the solution."
"Apache Airflow improved workflow efficiency, but we had to find solutions for large workflows. For instance, a monthly workflow with 1200 jobs had to be split into three to four pieces as it struggled with large job numbers. Loading a workflow with 500 jobs could take 10 minutes, which wasn't acceptable."
"The solution could be improved by simplifying the integration process."
"My experience with tech support has not been very good. Most of the time, issues are escalated to level three, where they are either unresolved or take two weeks to address."
"ActiveMatrix is in the middle field. MuleDB is more on the engineering side with Java and other things. SnapLogic is there are on the higher side with very low coding. TIBCO stays in the middle like IBM or Oracle. TIBCO can move towards IBM's way of doing. IBM has a big market and many varieties of products and good integration, which TIBCO doesn't have. It can have better integration. TIBCO's transition to the cloud is a little slow. As compared to Dell, Boomi, and Mulesoft. TIBCO took the steps a little later. TIBCO's ID was far better and easier to work with previously. TIBCO's 5.x ID was very good, and the development environment and the transition were easy. Version 6.5 onwards, it is a stable product, but it would be good if they can do something similar to version 5.4 with version 6. They should concentrate on this API market. It will give them the strength and the ability to grab the market back."
"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU."
"Technical support needs to be streamlined."
"The maintenance of the package could be improved."
"The product is missing some means of addressing more complex BPM constructs and should interface with more platforms easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free if you use Amazon AWS."
"It is an open-source solution."
"We use a community edition of Apache Airflow. It is open source and free."
"For the time being, it doesn't cost anything."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"Apache Airflow is a free solution that can be downloaded and ready for use at any moment."
"Apache Airflow is a product that is free of licenses, meaning there is no need to buy a license."
"The cost is quite affordable."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is an expensive tool compared to others."
"There are some discussions about perpetual licenses and conversions, but I'm not much familiar with them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...
What do you like most about Apache Airflow?
Apache Airflow is easy to use and can monitor task execution easily. For instance, when performing setup tasks, you can conveniently view the logs without delving into the job details.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Airflow?
We don't experience issues with pricing as Apache Airflow is part of a larger platform. It is a sub-feature and not an individual purchase.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU. Making it lightweight so it can run on a minimum processor and less memory would be beneficial. Additionally, the current wo...
What is your primary use case for TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
We are using TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM for network deployment workflows. For example, if a customer is interested in getting a NetWorker, there is a workflow where we log in, get the customer details,...
What advice do you have for others considering TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
The overall rating for TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is eight out of ten. Although it is a very powerful workflow tool, it is expensive, and only companies with sufficient resources can afford it.
 

Also Known As

Airflow
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Agari, WePay, Astronomer
ADIS, Citi, Bank of Montreal, First Citizens Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Airflow vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.