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ActiveMQ vs MuleSoft Anypoint Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

ActiveMQ
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Ranking in Message Queue (MQ) Software
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (1st), Workload Automation (4th), Cloud Data Integration (4th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Message Queue (MQ) Software category, the mindshare of ActiveMQ is 22.4%, down from 25.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is 7.3%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ActiveMQ22.4%
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform7.3%
Other70.3%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
 

Featured Reviews

MD
Software Engineer III at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration capabilities enhance message handling without human interaction
With ActiveMQ there should be more options. If you work with other technologies, for example, Java, there are many options. We can integrate the way we want ActiveMQ. We can create partitions and clusters, but AP is not providing such options currently. It only provides time, request response timing, the number of requests that need to be handled, and protocol types. The configuration needs to be broadened inside AP to perform in a better way. Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks. The configuration aspect is tricky. When configurations are proper, ActiveMQ almost has zero errors.
GO
Senior Validation Engineer at Weir Group PLC
Integration workflows have become transparent and secure while error tracking is streamlined
The best features in MuleSoft Anypoint Platform for me are transparency between logging in or deploying and using different environments. Managing different environments for the transparency of error logins or how to trace traceability is very important. It's very easy to use and sort, so you can see where everything has gone right and everything has gone wrong. I'm aware of the drag-and-drop interface in MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, and it's very, very quick. It's very time-saving and very efficient. The security features on MuleSoft Anypoint Platform help maintain data integrity in my organization; I would say it's second to none. It's one of the best out there that I have worked with because of the encryption and decryption, and there are a lot of security aspects. I would assess the platform's data mapping and transformation capabilities as amazing. Automation has been straightforward; the transformation and mapping have been easy to use, easy to source, and from the source to the target. I would say it has been very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is straightforward and only takes a few minutes."
"It provides the best support services."
"ActiveMQ brings the most value to small applications because it will not cost you very much to complete."
"The ability to store the failed events for some time is valuable."
"We value ActiveMQ for its performance, throughput, and low latency, especially in handling large volumes of data and sequential management of topics."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the holding and forwarding."
"I am impressed with the tool’s latency. Also, the messages in ActiveMQ wait in a queue. The messages will start to move when the system reopens after getting stuck."
"I'm impressed, I think that Active MQ is great."
"Customers can make use of Runtime Fabric, an RTF environment."
"MuleSoft offers with the Anypoint Platform a unified platform for API management and an integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) as well as an on-premise Enterprise Service Bus pattern."
"The API-led connectivity approach of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform offers specific functionality based on various conditions."
"The solution's market place for different kinds of integration platforms is the most valuable feature."
"Mule Anypoint Platform is our preferred platform for integration."
"Overall, it is a pretty good product. It is also very scalable."
"It has improved our organization a lot because of the increase in productivity, and it has simplified the development of products. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform is a highly effective tool where you can build integrations so effectively. If you establish the integration platform, it increases productivity. It helps us to do effective re-authentication, and it speeds the integration."
"This is the easiest and best tool available."
 

Cons

"It does not scale out well. It ends up being very complex if you have a lot of mirror queues."
"Sometimes issues arise in production with ActiveMQ due to the number of requests. For example, if you have configured one thousand requests at a time and it receives one thousand and one messages at a time, it breaks."
"The UI. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. The UI is too simple. Sometimes you wanna see the messages coming to the queue, and you have to refresh the dashboard, the console of the product."
"This solution could improve by providing better documentation."
"It would be great if it is included as part of the solution, as Kafka is doing. Even though the use case of Kafka is different, If something like data extraction is possible, or if we can experiment with partition tolerance and other such things, that will be great."
"The tool needs to improve its installation part which is lengthy. The product is already working on that aspect so that the complete installation gets completed within a month."
"Message Management: Better management of the messages. Perhaps persist them, or put in another queue with another life cycle."
"AI capabilities require improvement in future updates."
"The terms of use and how it's priced has become very difficult to manage, which is forcing us to look for alternatives already - and we haven't even been using it for that long just yet."
"Price-wise, it is a good product since it is reasonably priced...Mule Anypoint Platform can get too complex for non-technical people."
"The product does not provide a priority level for the message."
"Information on monitoring could be improved."
"The logs in terms of how the logs are populated could be improved."
"An on-premise setup requires special skills and you need a lot of professional services."
"Adding connectors for new upcoming applications would add extra value to this product."
"The compatibility with vendors can be improved. Microsoft Azure heavily uses single software."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is reasonable and competitive compared to other solutions."
"We are using the open-source version, so we have not looked at any pricing."
"There are no fees because it is open-source."
"It’s open source, ergo free."
"The solution is less expensive than its competitors."
"I use open source with standard Apache licensing."
"We use the open-source version."
"ActiveMQ is open source, so it is free to use."
"Making changes in Anypoint MQ is expensive."
"The product is still very expensive."
"The solution has a high price."
"Mule is not the cheapest integration platform out there, but it deserves the price we are paying."
"The product's price seems to be competent in comparison to other products in the market."
"Regarding pricing, I believe there could be room for improvement to align with user expectations."
"I can't give you a straightforward answer because sometimes it depends on the usage. If you're going to have fewer than 5 million messages, it is free of cost. If you're going to have more than 5 million messages, they're going to charge $100 per month"
"The pricing of our solution is highly competitive. While it may not be categorized as exceptionally low, it is certainly more affordable compared to IBM."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ActiveMQ?
For reliable messaging, the most valuable feature of ActiveMQ for us is ensuring prompt message delivery.
What needs improvement with ActiveMQ?
Pricing is something to consider with ActiveMQ, though cloud pricing is not costly and depends upon the compute selection. Focusing on AI is essential nowadays. AI capabilities require improvement ...
What is your primary use case for ActiveMQ?
In my current organization, I'm only working with ActiveMQ. I previously worked with IBM WebSphere MQ.
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

AMQ
Data Integrator, Anypoint MQ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Washington, Daugherty Systems, CSC, STG Technologies, Inc. 
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 ActiveMQ vs. MuleSoft Anypoint Platform and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.