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Mule ESB vs WSO2 Enterprise Integrator 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
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator is 5.2%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Decreases the development timeframe and costs
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems. Often, customers decide to develop using open-source tools like Spring Boot if there aren't many connectors required to avoid increasing costs. They'll develop this way and then deploy using APIM, the bare minimum needed. It is mainly required for very complicated setups with many connectors. In the implementations I've seen, people often used open-source tools because there weren't many third-party systems involved—just their organization's own systems. From WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, I expect them to bring up more and more connectors in the future. That's the main expectation. Having more connectors in various areas will help us when discussing new requirements. I don't have any specific use case right now, so I can't name a particular connector. But, as new technologies emerge, the relevant connectors should be there for those. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator mainly helps with the integration part, which can be simplified only if you have relevant connectors for whatever you're doing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Mule Expression Language"
"I like that Mule ESB provides fast and good technical support."
"The most valuable features of Mule ESB are its ease of use, documentation, ease to adapt to newer security and vulnerabilities, and a lot of help available. Additionally, there is a lot of flexibility, many patches available, and they provide APIs. They are a market standard."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that."
"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"The cloud and integration abilities are most useful allowing us to use applications such as Salesforce and DataWeave."
"In my opinion, the most valuable aspect of this solution is its extensive range of adaptors and connectors. This feature holds significant importance and provides great value to users."
"The customer service executives are very responsive."
"The solution's customer service is good."
"It's a consolidated product. It works and it does its job pretty well."
"The solution basically conforms to our standards."
"It's a very complete product. It allows us to network security and add more layers of security to the system."
"The installation process is easy."
"The stability is excellent."
 

Cons

"MuleSoft isn't as mature as some other integration technologies out there like IBM WebSphere. There's room for growth, and MuleSoft is working toward that."
"MuleSoft is not so strong in method-based integration, so they're not so functional in that regard."
"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
"Lacking some connectors that could be included."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"We would like to have a built-in logging framework in which we can do auditing."
"The Anypoint platform consumes a lot of memory, and it would be great for developers if it were more lightweight."
"From the product perspective, it was sometimes hard to manage the dependencies. When we had to add dependencies on a couple of different packages, it was sometimes confusing. It was hard to update them with Anypoint Studio, as well as with MuleSoft. There were challenges with that. So, that's one of the areas that could be improved."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"If I have to buy software, then it becomes expensive for me."
"The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for easy integration with third-party systems."
"I would like to see them bring back a feature, from earlier versions, that was very useful in debugging and finding issues."
"I would like to see better documentation for the open-source version."
"In my opinion, the administration model and interface, of Carbon, are lacking in terms of its features and user experience."
"The micro integrator should be improved. There is room for enhancement considering alternative integration components."
"WSO2 libraries are not mature enough. For example, if you want to integrate with Kafka using its Kafka library, it often has many bugs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"The pricing must be improved."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"I rate the product price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The cost is better than IBM Cloud Pak."
"The solution costs about 20,000 or 30,000 euros per year, per instance."
"The pricing of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for enterprise subscriptions can be considered expensive, especially from the perspective of someone who prefers open-source software."
"The open-source, unsupported version is available free of charge."
"It is a low-cost solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
 

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 do you like most about WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
WSO2's analytics capability is good, considering the ELC support they provide.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The product has reasonable and competitive pricing for enterprise customers. It is expensive for small businesses especially. They are using the open-source solution, and they find it expensive sin...
What needs improvement with WSO2 Enterprise Integrator?
The main issue with the product is pricing. It uses core-based pricing for WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and API Manager. It would be best if you had APIM by default. It provides many connectors for e...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
West
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.