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Confluent vs TIBCO BusinessWorks 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Confluent
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (5th)
TIBCO BusinessWorks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Confluent and TIBCO BusinessWorks aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Confluent is designed for Streaming Analytics and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, down 8.6% compared to last year.
TIBCO BusinessWorks, on the other hand, focuses on Data Integration, holds 0.9% mindshare, down 1.0% since last year.
Streaming Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Confluent6.5%
Apache Flink9.8%
Databricks8.2%
Other75.5%
Streaming Analytics
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TIBCO BusinessWorks0.9%
Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC)3.5%
SSIS3.5%
Other92.1%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

PavanManepalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Sr Middleware Messaging Integration Engineer at Wells Fargo
Has supported streaming use cases across data centers and simplifies fraud analytics with SQL-based processing
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools. They need to improve in that direction by not only reducing costs but also providing better solutions for the problems customers face to avoid frustrations, whether through future enhancement requests or ensuring product stability. The cost should be worked on, and they should provide better solutions for customers. Solutions should focus on hierarchical topics; if a customer has different types of data and sources, they should be able to send them to the same place for analytics. Currently, Confluent requires everything to send to the same topic, which becomes very large and makes running analytics difficult. The hierarchy of topics should be improved. This part is available in MQ and other products such as Solace, but it is missing in Confluent, leading many in capital markets and trading to switch to Solace. In terms of stability, it is not the stability itself that needs improvement but rather the delivery semantics. Other products offer exactly-once delivery out of the box, whereas Confluent states it will offer this but lacks the knobs or levers for tuning configurations effectively. Confluent has hundreds of configurations that application teams must understand, which creates a gap. Users are often unaware of what values to set for better performance or to achieve exactly-once semantics, making it difficult to navigate through them. Delivery semantics also need to be worked on.
Vinod_Parmar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Solutions Architect at UNSW Australia
Long-term integration has supported real-time data exchange and simplified adapter-based workflows
The challenges I have faced with TIBCO BusinessWorks mostly relate to financial applications that do not come with those adapters, so that requires custom coding. The features currently in TIBCO BusinessWorks are good enough, but going forward, as we are doing a lot of AI-based integrations, I would like to see TIBCO come up with more prompt-driven configurations rather than people having to understand deep technology. AI-driven features in TIBCO BusinessWorks would be beneficial, so that our business tech BA can do the development rather than needing programmers. More artificial intelligence functionality would help so people do not have to code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution can handle a high volume of data because it works and scales well."
"I would rate the scalability of the solution at eight out of ten. We have 20 people who use Confluent in our organization now, and we hope to increase usage in the future."
"As an enterprise organization, data availability is critical and Confluent provides that SLA support."
"One of the best features of Confluent is that it's very easy to search and have a live status with Jira."
"With Confluent Cloud we no longer need to handle the infrastructure and the plumbing, which is a concern for Confluent. The other advantage is that all portfolios have access to the data that is being shared."
"We mostly use the solution's message queues and event-driven architecture."
"I find Confluent's Kafka Connectors and Kafka Streams invaluable for my use cases because they simplify real-time data processing and ETL tasks by providing reliable, pre-packaged connectors and tools."
"The documentation process is fast with the tool."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks' real-time data exchange capability has benefited our customers greatly; we conduct a lot of messaging with Superstream and external partners, so it works well for us."
"I like TIBCO BusinessWorks because it has a user-friendly GUI for developing solutions."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten…On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate the initial setup a nine."
"The initial setup of TIBCO BusinessWorks was straightforward since we have used the solution in our organization for a long time."
"The most valuable features are the stability and the time to market."
"The real-time data exchange capability of TIBCO BusinessWorks has helped mission-critical systems because the uptime is superb."
"One of the most valuable features is that it's a simple development. It takes a short time to get services to work."
"The most valuable feature is the low-code platform."
 

Cons

"Confluence could improve the server version of the solution. However, most companies are going to the cloud."
"One area we've identified that could be improved is the governance and access control to the Kafka topics. We've found some limitations, like a threshold of 10,000 rules per cluster, that make it challenging to manage access at scale if we have many different data sources."
"It could be more user-friendly and centralized. A way to reduce redundancy would be helpful."
"There is no local support team in Saudi Arabia."
"Areas for improvement include implementing multi-storage support to differentiate between database stores based on data age and optimizing storage costs."
"Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Confluent charging high fees while not offering features that match those of other tools."
"The beginner who doesn't know how to work on HTML will struggle as when you create spaces in the Confluent, if you want to have some meeting notes or anything else, you need to know HTML and which HTML tags to include."
"Currently, in the early stages, I see a gap on the security side. If you are using the SaaS version, we would like to get a fuller, more secure solution that can be adopted right out of the box. Confluence could do a better job sharing best practices or a reusable pattern that others have used, especially for companies that can not afford to hire professional services from Confluent."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks needs to improve its digital IDs and data processing capabilities. It will benefit small and medium businesses."
"The cost of this product is too expensive for smaller companies or those with a small number of integrations."
"The challenges I have faced with TIBCO BusinessWorks mostly relate to financial applications that do not come with those adapters, so that requires custom coding."
"There are multiple plugins which increase the number of product installations."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks could be improved with cloud support."
"The cost of this product is too expensive for smaller companies or those with a small number of integrations."
"Technical support is average. It's not the best."
"Performance and latency could be enhanced. Additionally, having signaling stack support would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Confluent is expensive, I would prefer, Apache Kafka over Confluent because of the high cost of maintenance."
"Confluent is an expensive solution as we went for a three contract and it was very costly for us."
"It comes with a high cost."
"Confluent is an expensive solution."
"Confluent has a yearly license, which is a bit high because it's on a per-user basis."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate Confluent's pricing at five. I have not encountered any additional costs."
"Confluent is highly priced."
"Confluence's pricing is quite reasonable, with a cost of around $10 per user that decreases as the number of users increases. Additionally, it's worth noting that for teams of up to 10 users, the solution is completely free."
"It is a bit expensive for medium-sized companies. If you are migrating from the current version to the container-supported version, it is quite expensive. The existing licensing will not work because the product platform itself is different."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"TIBCO BusinessWorks is expensive."
"I don't have the prices of the products, but I know that TIBCO is not a cheap solution. I think that this solution is more suitable for large companies because I don't think that small- or medium-sized companies would have the money for this solution. WSO2 has the community version for free, so many of the smaller companies can use it. I'm not sure what the prices are for support, though, so I suppose the support for WSO2 is not cheap either."
"The product is not cheap."
"My understanding is that the licensing is very costly."
"The solution is too expensive. It's one of the most expensive solutions out there, particularly because there are so many open-source competitors on the market. I don't know the exact numbers, however."
"I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Confluent?
They charge a lot for scaling, which makes it expensive.
What needs improvement with Confluent?
I recommend that Confluent should improve its solution to keep up with competitors in the market, such as Solace and other upcoming tools such as NATS. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about ...
What is your primary use case for Confluent?
The main use cases for Confluent are log aggregation and streaming. I'm familiar with Confluent stream processing with KSQL. KSQL helps in terms of data analytics strategies because if we are the d...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO BusinessWorks?
Because we have enterprise licenses, the pricing for TIBCO BusinessWorks is quite reasonable for us, so we do not see any issue.
What needs improvement with TIBCO BusinessWorks?
The challenges I have faced with TIBCO BusinessWorks mostly relate to financial applications that do not come with those adapters, so that requires custom coding. The features currently in TIBCO Bu...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Priceline.com, Nordea, Target, RBC, Tivo, Capital One, Chartboost
Euler Hermes, QSuper, Scandinavian Airlines
Find out what your peers are saying about Confluent vs. TIBCO BusinessWorks and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.