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Mule ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

Mule ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 16.5%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 4.9%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Mule ESB16.5%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus4.9%
Other78.6%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Srinivas-Kanduri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Integration architecture has enabled reliable multi-channel messaging and secure API management but now needs better analytics and simpler development
In my opinion, the real-time analytics part of Mule ESB is not up to the mark for the decision-making process. While there are some analytics features, they lack the standards needed for enterprise use. Compared to other analytics tools such as Power BI, MuleSoft falls short.Points for improvement in Mule ESB definitely include enhancing the analytics capabilities because currently, they rely on external logging tools such as Splunk or ELK, which is lagging behind compared to other tools such as Workato that offer more analytical features. Additionally, issues arise with AI-based use cases due to dependencies on Salesforce tools such as agent force, making development more complicated when it should be more independent. Developing AI-based agents without being tied to Salesforce applications could also enhance functionality.
Mustofa Yonus - PeerSpot reviewer
Cheif Specialist- Licensing Systems at Roads & Transport Authority
A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most powerful feature is DataWeave, which is a powerful language where data can be transformed from one form into another."
"It is one of the best integration tools in the market."
"Mule ESB is a very easy-to-use and user-friendly solution."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"The solution improved my company by modernizing the way we offer services and improving the user experience."
"The product is very stable."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"It's very stable and reliable."
"TIBCO has the platform in terms of speed and ease of use."
"The technology is really easy to learn."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."
"The stability of this solution is excellent."
"The GUI and IDE features of this solution are easy to work with and to develop. We find application management easy using this solution. It is a stable product"
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be more straightforward."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"The stability could be improved."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"If TIBCO could be able to sort the size of their base image in the Container edition, it would be really marvelous. Right now it's around 299 MB. We'd really want it to reduce to a few MBs."
"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."
"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."
"The stability of their latest version is not on par with their classic version 5.X."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."
"The solution is very expensive when you use multiple components, it would b better if this could be reduced."
"The intermediate version that we are using has stability issues. These stability issues should be resolved, but it seems like TIBCO is not focusing on resolving these issues. The resolution timelines are quite high even for high-priority incidents. Its price should be lower. Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"Regarding licensing and pricing, I find it somewhat flexible. They are more flexible with larger customers compared to small and medium ones, as their licensing model depends on ports and other factors. Large customers benefit from more flexibility in implementation and renewal compared to smaller ones."
"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."
"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."
"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."
"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."
"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."
"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

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.
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Also Known As

No data available
ActiveMatrix Service Bus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.