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Confluent vs MuleSoft Anypoint Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (3rd)
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (4th), Business-to-Business Middleware (1st), Workload Automation (5th), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Gustavo-Barbosa Dos Santos - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good technical support services and a valuable feature for real-time data streaming
Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance. It helps us understand the various requirements of multiple customers and validates the information for different versions. We can automate the tasks using Confluent Kafka. Thus, it guarantees us the data quality and maintains the integrity of message contracts.
Mohan BS - PeerSpot reviewer
A useful tool to integrate applications and for data transformations that need to improve in the area of price and support
The main area where improvements are required in the product revolves around budgeting. The cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required, especially when compared to other tools, like Dell Boomi or Oracle. Mule Anypoint Platform is made available with many components, and whether users use them or not depends on their choices. For example, though there is a tool called Anypoint MQ, our organization prefers to pay and use Kafka, as we don't want to use MuleSoft Anypoint MQ. In Mule Anypoint Platform, there needs to be proper segregation to help users identify what they need and don't need, making it an area where users need to be careful when opting for MuleSoft. Mule Anypoint Platform is an integration tool and not an ETL solution. When a user has to deal with a huge number of data, then Mule Anypoint Platform should not be a preferred choice since it can only be used for lightweight purposes revolving around APIs. There is a need to have a clear architectural decision made before opting for Mule Anypoint Platform. When there is a requirement for heavy data transformation, then users need to decide whether to go with Mule Anypoint Platform or any other platform available in the market. Though the tool comes with many useful components, it depends on whether the user plans to use all of its features. Recently, the product has come up with a new feature that is similar to an API catalog. MuleSoft had come up with the UAPIM feature almost eight months to a year ago, which had some concerns in the area of budgeting. Whether you build APIs using Javacore or any other tools, they can be cataloged using MuleSoft's UAPIM feature, for which users need to pay an extra amount, making it an area of concern for users. It would be great if MuleSoft's support team could provide help with the area of Kubernetes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"It is also good for knowledge base management."
"A person with a good IT background and HTML will not have any trouble with Confluent."
"Implementing Confluent's schema registry has significantly enhanced our organization's data quality assurance."
"Our main goal is to validate whether we can build a scalable and cost-efficient way to replicate data from these various sources."
"Kafka Connect framework is valuable for connecting to the various source systems where code doesn't need to be written."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"The monitoring module is impressive."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is a huge list of available connectors for a lot of different platforms, which we can use very easily."
"Customers can make use of Runtime Fabric, an RTF environment."
"The product’s ability to seamlessly translate protocols is great."
"Whenever we need some support in our local language, we get it easily. They also have an office in Germany and if a person is unable to contact them by phone, they can go to the office in person."
"The exchange and API management features are the best in the market."
"The integration potential is excellent."
"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."
"It can scale."
 

Cons

"It could have more themes. They should also have more reporting-oriented plugins as well. It would be great to have free custom reports that can be dispatched directly from Jira."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"It would help if the knowledge based documents in the support portal could be available for public use as well."
"They should remove Zookeeper because of security issues."
"The pricing model should include the ability to pick features and be charged for them only."
"It requires some application specific connectors which are lacking. This needs to be added."
"The product should integrate tools for incorporating diagrams like Lucidchart. It also needs to improve its formatting features. We also faced issues while granting permissions."
"The solution is very expensive. They need to work on the pricing."
"Price-wise, it is a good product since it is reasonably priced...Mule Anypoint Platform can get too complex for non-technical people."
"Pricing is one aspect of the solution that is troublesome. It's too expensive for smaller organizations."
"Mule should have better B2B integration."
"Information on monitoring could be improved."
"The terms of use and how it's priced has become very difficult to manage, which is forcing us to look for alternatives already - and we haven't even been using it for that long just yet."
"The platform's data integration tools need improvement on the processing side."
"There are so many solutions like this, but this is not as mature as those products. The other MQ products have the capability of reprocessing and maintaining the persistence of the data. They can handle large volumes and large messages, but Anypoint MQ doesn't have those capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"The pricing model of Confluent could improve because if you have a classic use case where you're going to use all the features there is no plan to reduce the features. You should be able to pick and choose basic services at a reduced price. The pricing was high for our needs. We should not have to pay for features we do not use."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Regarding pricing, I think Confluent is a premium product, but it's hard for me to say definitively if it's overly expensive. We're still trying to understand if the features and reduced maintenance complexity justify the cost, especially as we scale our platform use."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"You have to pay additional for one or two features."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"Licensing can be complex as is the case with most iPaaS/cloud offerings."
"The licensing is core-based. My customers tell me that it's very expensive compared to the cost of other integration suites."
"The solution is the priciest in the market which is an issue for some clients."
"The solution has a high price."
"The product is still very expensive."
"I rate the product price a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The solution's pricing, as per the old approach, is expensive."
"Regarding pricing, I believe there could be room for improvement to align with user expectations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Confluent?
I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I am not very impressed by Confluent. We continuously face issues, such as Kafka being down and slow responses from the support team. The lack of easy access to the Confluent support team is also a...
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

No data available
Data Integrator, Anypoint MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
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 Confluent vs. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.