Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

FME vs TIBCO BusinessWorks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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

FME
Ranking in Data Integration
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO BusinessWorks
Ranking in Data Integration
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of FME is 1.3%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO BusinessWorks is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
TIBCO BusinessWorks0.9%
FME1.3%
Other97.8%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Gert Booysen - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Solutions Leader at GE Vernova
Extensive format support and reliable integration enhance data management while new pricing model requires reassessment
I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the model changes that they've implemented a while back, it actually made it more expensive to use, especially on the server side. They changed the licensing model, and that made customers think it is overpriced. Some customers were actually looking at alternatives. Pricing with the model changes was perceived negatively. I work primarily with enterprise customers, Vodacom, Eskom, so it's tier-one customers. For small customers, this solution is a bit too expensive. They don't really use it and just do direct integration on smaller implementations. This is basically used by tier-one customers. FME is still able to save time and money for clients. It's still a good investment. Regarding similar products to FME, GE developed a product called Data Fabric. That is a real-time operational integration platform, Data Fabric Network Connect, which is a GE Grid OS product. It is actually more expensive than FME, but the purpose is different as it's operational. The vendor in this case is GE, and it's a company that we bought that used to be called Greenbird. In current use scenarios, FME is still leading compared to Data Fabric. The GE product has a different application.
CL
Software Developer at Telkom Mobile
Drag and drop capabilities simplify service development for easy building
It is drag and drop. Drag and drop make it easier to build the service end to end. It is easier to build services with BusinessWorks. When I have an architecture designed to plug in the service itself with BW, it makes things much easier. It is easy to integrate, especially when the architecture is well-designed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From my reseller perspective, the best features in FME are the ease of operation and the fact that it works."
"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface. There is nothing better. It is very easy to debug because you can see all steps where there are failures. Overall the software is easy to optimize a process."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"It has a very friendly user interface. You don't need to use a lot of code. For us that's the most important aspect about it. Also, it has a lot of connectors and few forms. It has a strong facial aspect. It can do a lot of facial analysis."
"FME is spatially aware and understands how to deal with the conversion of spatial objects and their attributes."
"We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else."
"All spatial features are unrivaled, and the possibility to execute them based on a scheduled trigger, manual, e-mail, Websocket, tweet, file/directory change or virtually any trigger is most valuable."
"The ability to link to different technologies is valuable to us."
"I work in operations, so I value BusinessWorks' performance the most."
"Good performance and reliability."
"Areas for improvement would be the cloud fitness of the product and the ease of migrating to newer versions."
"It's a great software application for the middleware use cases to connect the front channels to the back ends in a secure and safer way."
"The solution is stable. We haven't had any serious technical issues."
"The solution is very scalable. It can handle a lot. We have encryption plus integration servers running on that platform currently."
"It is a very robust system."
 

Cons

"The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."
"FME can improve the geographical transformation. I've had some problems with the geographical transformations, but it's probably mostly because I'm not the most skilled geographer in-house. The solution requires some in-depth knowledge to perform some functions."
"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."
"We are looking at the possibility of using Glue instead of FME, using the native AWS product."
"The learning curve takes time compared to webMethods."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks could be improved with cloud support."
"There are not many plugins available to integrate the databases. We have to write it in Java and integrate it. The developers should have more knowledge. These are the three main aspects that they could improve."
"The container-based image is too large and this makes auto-scaling difficult."
"The learning curve takes time compared to webMethods."
"Its price can be improved. For medium enterprises, it is a very expensive tool. In the market, you won't get many resources for this solution. You won't find many developers in the market very easily. The latest version of TIBCO (6.4 or 6.x) is not very stable. It has got many issues. We have raised this with TIBCO, and they are taking a lot of time to come up with a fix, which is making us move away from this product. Some of the performance-tuning aspects are also missing in version 6. They should provide performance-related fixes, which will be helpful for the customers. If you are migrating from the current version to the container-supported version, it is quite expensive. The product has evolved, but it is very pricey. That's one of the challenges. They have provided all the features that are there in other products, but this is a platform upgrade. The platform has completely been changed from 5.x to 6.x, and we can't use the same environment. We can't run both versions on the same server as VM. The development environment is entirely different. In version 5.x, there was a proprietary designer. Now, it has common plug-ins developed on top of Eclipse."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"I'd like to see a new cloud approach in the next release. They need to work on integrations, stability and management issues on their cloud platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."
"We used the standard licensing for our use of FME. The cost was approximately €15,000 annually. We always welcome less expensive solutions, if the solution could be less expensive it would be helpful."
"The product's price is reasonable."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks is expensive."
"Licensing scheme is too rigid"
"I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten."
"It is a bit expensive for medium-sized companies. If you are migrating from the current version to the container-supported version, it is quite expensive. The existing licensing will not work because the product platform itself is different."
"The solution is too expensive. It's one of the most expensive solutions out there, particularly because there are so many open-source competitors on the market. I don't know the exact numbers, however."
"I don't have the prices of the products, but I know that TIBCO is not a cheap solution. I think that this solution is more suitable for large companies because I don't think that small- or medium-sized companies would have the money for this solution. WSO2 has the community version for free, so many of the smaller companies can use it. I'm not sure what the prices are for support, though, so I suppose the support for WSO2 is not cheap either."
"The license is expensive, and I would rate it one out of ten."
"My understanding is that the licensing is very costly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
32%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Computer Software Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Hospitality Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with FME?
I haven't had any input or requirements from any customers that are not currently covered, so I don't have any additional needs that were identified or raised to me. Regarding pricing, with the mod...
What is your primary use case for FME?
The use cases for FME are mainly integration to the GE Smallworld product. GE Smallworld is a GE product, and we are using it to integrate with other third-party products into GE Smallworld and ADM...
What advice do you have for others considering FME?
The overall rating for FME is eight out of ten, and I prefer the feedback to be anonymous. My job title is Senior Solutions Architect.
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO BusinessWorks?
The current licensing cost for the product involves our resource sourcing team for negotiations. It depends on the type of licenses being used, whether perpetual or not. Sourcing manages these aspe...
What needs improvement with TIBCO BusinessWorks?
There could be improvement areas in TIBCO BusinessWorks because every area needs to improve as the industry is demanding and traffic is increasing. Performance and latency could be enhanced. Additi...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System
Euler Hermes, QSuper, Scandinavian Airlines
Find out what your peers are saying about FME vs. TIBCO BusinessWorks and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.