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IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB vs Oracle Service Bus 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Integration Bus enhances ROI through effective integration, long-term value, cost savings, and sustained market readiness.
Sentiment score
6.2
Mule ESB ROI is challenging to calculate but favorable with effective design, despite high licensing costs affecting returns.
Sentiment score
6.7
Oracle Service Bus enhances operational efficiency, providing cost savings, adaptability, scalability, and improved problem-solving without direct ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
IBM Integration Bus' customer service is generally praised but has issues with costs, response time, and varying support quality.
Sentiment score
6.7
Mule ESB support is praised for expertise, but response times vary with some users needing more comprehensive solutions.
Sentiment score
6.3
Oracle Service Bus support receives mixed reviews, with responsiveness varying by local versus global support and cloud services.
The technical support of Mule ESB can be rated from nine to ten.
I rate the technical support from Oracle a nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
IBM Integration Bus offers scalable, efficient integration for enterprise applications, with strong adaptability and performance in high-volume environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
Mule ESB ensures high scalability, suitable for enterprises, enabling seamless cloud deployment and accommodating extensive user growth effectively.
Sentiment score
7.0
Oracle Service Bus is scalable, excelling in enterprise scenarios but facing challenges with memory, complexity, and cloud scalability.
Mule ESB is a scalable solution.
There are dependencies on the Java version and application being used.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
IBM Integration Bus is reliable and stable, rated highly by users, despite occasional Oracle connectivity and latency issues.
Sentiment score
7.2
Mule ESB is generally stable, especially in newer versions, but issues exist with large files and resource demands.
Sentiment score
7.9
Oracle Service Bus is highly stable and reliable, often rated 8 or 9 for stability by users.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Integration Bus needs interface, performance, and cloud improvements, plus enhanced support, flexibility, resources, and better pricing.
Mule ESB requires better documentation, stable releases, improved connectors, coding features, and performance enhancements, despite high memory and licensing costs.
Oracle Service Bus requires improvements in logging, error handling, integration, documentation, installation, security, scalability, and modernization to enhance usability.
More information is needed from MuleSoft.
This can happen due to legacy systems that might not allow the use of microservices.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Integration Bus pricing is competitive yet costly, varying by license, making it viable for larger enterprises.
Mule ESB is costly for SMEs despite a free version, due to licenses and additional fees for certain features.
Oracle Service Bus pricing is high with licensing complexity, but valuable in bundles and suitable for large enterprises.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Integration Bus offers excellent protocol support, performance, scalability, and integration capabilities with systems like SAP and Oracle.
Mule ESB excels in flexibility, integration, user-friendly design, and scalability, featuring diverse deployment and robust support.
Oracle Service Bus simplifies integration with diverse applications through comprehensive adapters, robust data handling, and a user-friendly interface.
They have their own language called DataWeave, which helps transform data and is efficient enough to handle any kind of transformation.
The main advantage of Oracle Service Bus is the possibility to integrate different systems using workflows and different architectures in the same product.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 22.0%, up from 21.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Service Bus is 11.7%, up from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.
Radhey Rajput - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows seamless integration and connectivity with different types of systems
I would suggest using this solution. Oracle Service Bus is very good. Any organization can use it. So it's very robust and scalable, and its security features are very good. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because there are some loopholes in service and support. Sometimes, when we have issues and go to Oracle support, they will not give us solutions. Instead, they will ask for so many log files and emails. The product is good, but the support is not.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using Mu...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was t...
What do you like most about IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mule ESB?
Pricing is higher compared to other solutions, and the licensing costs are high.
What needs improvement with Mule ESB?
In India, particularly in the banking sector, clients do not prefer cloud solutions due to regulatory and compliance ...
What do you like most about Oracle Service Bus?
The stability is consistently high, with only one notable issue encountered.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Service Bus?
I view both Oracle and IBM products as expensive. There are no significant differences in pricing between these produ...
What needs improvement with Oracle Service Bus?
The main problem could be related to timeout issues. This can happen due to legacy systems that might not allow the u...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
MakeMyTrip Ltd., Griffith University, Colab Consulting Pty. Ltd., Pacfico Seguros Generales, IGEPA IT-SERVICE GmbH, Guangzhou Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Pacfico Seguros Generales, Bank Audi S.A.L., Rydges Sydney Airport, Intelligent Pathways, Nacional Monte de Piedad IAP
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: April 2025.
851,471 professionals have used our research since 2012.