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

Mule ESB 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Calculating ROI from Mule ESB varies, influenced by design strategies, licensing costs, and varying perceptions of its value.
Sentiment score
6.2
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform offers ROI by reducing costs, increasing innovation, and leveraging APIs, though pricing may challenge smaller companies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Mule ESB support varies by subscription, offering quick responses but sometimes lacks depth; forums provide additional insights.
Sentiment score
6.6
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform offers responsive support, praised by premium users, though some find response times slow and use community resources.
We have a good relationship with our vendor, and they are ready to help us with any technical issues.
The technical support of Mule ESB can be rated from nine to ten.
The Salesforce team offers different levels of support.
The support team is responsive and helpful.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Mule ESB scales efficiently for diverse enterprises, supporting seamless cloud deployments and handling extensive data through flexible integration.
Sentiment score
7.5
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform provides scalable cloud solutions, offering auto-scalability and varying costs, suitable for medium to large organizations.
Mule ESB is a scalable solution.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is quite scalable, and it meets our use cases with no issues preventing implementation.
MuleSoft provides the ability to scale, yet it is costly to do so.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Mule ESB is stable and reliable, despite minor issues with older versions, large files, and clustering.
Sentiment score
7.7
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is reliable, stable, with minimal issues, better on-prem scalability, handling low volumes well in large organizations.
 

Room For Improvement

Mule ESB users report challenges with documentation, stability, performance, licensing costs, support, and integration, requiring significant improvements.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform needs improvements in error handling, documentation, support, integration, AI, security, and interface for better performance.
More information is needed from MuleSoft.
From my perspective, Mule ESB is lightweight, but it can be improved when it comes to the agility of the system.
Currently, it uses other standards, but adopting OpenAPI, the standard in the market, would be beneficial.
When dealing with multiple transactions or trading, the system can lose control, and tracking becomes hectic.
MuleSoft is considered expensive, so pricing is a major concern.
 

Setup Cost

Mule ESB is seen as expensive with flexible pricing and offers support only in the paid Enterprise version.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform's pricing, though complex and costly, is justified by features but may deter smaller organizations.
I do not know the specific costs, but given that it is part of MuleSoft, I suspect it is not cheap.
MuleSoft is considered one of the more expensive products in the market.
The platform reduces manual workload in maintaining infrastructure, but it does come with some cost considerations.
 

Valuable Features

Mule ESB provides flexible, high-performance integration with extensive connectivity, DataWeave, API-led architecture, cloud capabilities, and strong support.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform excels in API management, hybrid integrations, and offers versatile deployment with strong monitoring and 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 best features of Mule ESB are that it's very robust and solid; I find that even our legacy systems go well with ESB.
The most valuable feature is the full lifecycle management, including Anypoint Designer and Exchange, as well as Discofolio API.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform helps to standardize data integration approaches, making it easier to implement integration projects.
The platform is integrated with Salesforce, making it preferable when using Salesforce products.
 

Categories and Ranking

Mule ESB
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (2nd)
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Integration solutions, they serve different purposes. Mule ESB is designed for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and holds a mindshare of 18.7%, down 22.6% compared to last year.
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Business-to-Business Middleware, holds 10.9% mindshare, down 14.5% since last year.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Business-to-Business Middleware
 

Featured Reviews

Maharsh-Kapadia - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms enterprise integration with comprehensive platform and excellent support
The best features of this solution are that everything we get into a single platform, whether it's integration, API, or data modeling; everything is available in one platform. It's a hybrid, including cloud and on-premise solutions with good connectivity and good connectors. From the benefits of using Mule ESB, we could reduce the manual tasks to 50% in one to two years. The cost is still something we are trying to make lower because we see some advantages when we move from point-to-point integration to API-led connectivity. We have seen a lot of reusable assets, so the cost is reduced. Ultimately, we want to see how it's transformed into business revenue; that's what we are still looking into.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
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

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 MuleSoft Anypoint Platform on cloud / on-premises and hybrid modes and on PCE/RTF ...
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 the best fit for our organization. Ultimately we decided to choose IBM Integratio...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
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

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
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 IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.