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

IBM Integration Bus vs Red Hat Fuse 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

IBM Integration Bus
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Fuse
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 21.0%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.1%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Integration Bus21.0%
Red Hat Fuse7.1%
Other71.9%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashraf Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful for complex integrations because it has tools and functionality to integrate with other systems
Everything needs to be improved. As far as integration and the cloud are concerned, things are moving to the cloud side. When you use Kubernetes and similar technologies, IBM Integration Bus doesn't greatly facilitate these environments. Maybe I don't know enough about that, but I feel that when it comes to the DevOps environment, the tool needs to be deployed on production in a way that's just like pods. Cloud integration needs to be more facilitated with the DevOps environment. This IBM technology needs to adapt because in the recent world, in the real world, we see that everything is just a cloud pod. Whenever you need to scale anything, you just put some cloud and pod and improve it, make any server and deploy it. But in IBM Integration Bus, there is a problem because we can't do this as easily. In short, IBM needs to more emphasize or more integrate with the cloud environments as well, similar to DevOps. There are limitations in IBM Integration Bus when it comes to DevOps.
Kaushal Kedia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a single console for all applications and supports Camel routing
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red Hat Fuse; the screen displayed that the containers had gone down while, in reality, they were running in the background. The user interface and the back-end code were not in sync in the aforementioned situation, which our organization frequently faced while using Red Hat Fuse. But at our company, we were using an older version of Red Hat Fuse in which we faced the issues. From the JBOS end, the product was very frequently changed from Red Hat, and it was difficult for our clients to keep investing money in every upgrade. Six or seven years back, Red Hat Fuse was one of the best solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability is mostly pretty good."
"The features I have found most valuable in this solution are transformation and routing."
"I have found the inbound and outbound adapter confirmations valuable."
"The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble."
"One of the most valuable features is App Connect Enterprise makes it possible to deploy it in the OpenShift cluster, which is very good. Overall the solution is very flexible."
"IBM Integration Bus is flexible, easy to use, and easy to configure."
"It can be implemented as an enterprise service bus to seamlessly connect all applications within your enterprise."
"It's easy to develop things, and it's easy to handle."
"The installation is quite okay. We don't really change much in the configuration. Most of the time, most of the settings remain with the default and we are able to handle our needs using the default setting."
"What I like about Red Hat Fuse is that it's a well-established integration software. I find all aspects of the tool positive."
"The features I found most valuable in Red Hat Fuse are the OSB framework, containerization, and the integration of Apache technologies such as the NQ channel, CXF, etc. These are the features that are very prominent in the solution. Red Hat Fuse also offers flexibility, so it's another valuable characteristic of the solution."
"The solution is stable. We have gone for months or years without any issue. There are no memory restarts, so from my point of view, it's very stable."
"The stability has been good."
"Because we have been doing Red Hat Fuse projects for three years, and over time we have matured, we can employ similar use cases and make use of accelerators or templates. It gives us an edge when we deliver these services or APIs quickly."
"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."
"The solution has more tooling and options."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more metered rest and API support. IBM is already working on it on Version 11, but it still needs improvement."
"They should add connectors to banking applications and other specific industries."
"The memory footprint should be minimized."
"The tracing and debugging features are not up to date with more modern technology available."
"There is room for improvement in providing more specific error messages and error criteria."
"It would be beneficial for it to function more as an iPaaS, with the runtime available in the cloud, potentially on platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud."
"IBM doesn't really have a very strong community surrounding the product. Most of its direct competitors are open source solutions, and those have an excellent and well-developed community around the tech to help users navigate the ins and outs of the product. IBM is lacking in this area."
"Technical support is something that should be better."
"The monitoring experience should be better."
"The testing part, specifically when running it in the cloud, could be improved. It's a little bit complex, especially considering its cloud nature."
"It might help if, in the documentation, there were a comments section or some kind of community input. I might read a page of documentation and not fully understand everything, or it might not quite answer the question I had. If there were a section associated with it where people could discuss the same topic, that might be helpful because somebody else might have already asked the question that I had."
"As its learning curve is quite steep, developer dependency will always be there in the case of a Red Hat Fuse development. This should be improved for developers. There should be some built-in connectors so the grind of the developer can be reduced."
"Currently, the main point of concern for us is how flexible it is to cater to different requirements. It should be more flexible."
"In the next release, I'd like more stability and more security overall."
"I don't know the product last versions. I know they are migrating a microservices concepts. We still didn't get there... but we are in the process."
"Containerization is one key area where the product can improve"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"IBM Integration Bus solution is expensive and this is one of the reasons we are looking for an alternative, such as MuleSoft."
"Our licensing is based on a five-year contract, and as far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The solution requires a license and is very expensive here in India."
"The price of the license could be cheaper."
"IBM Integration Bus is expensive."
"It is a highly-priced solution."
"In terms of pricing, Red Hat Fuse is a bit expensive because nowadays, if I'm just comparing it with OpenShift with Kubernetes, so Kubernetes and OpenShift, are similar, and Kubernetes is open source, so Red Hat Fuse is quite expensive in terms of support, but Red Hat Fuse provides value for money because it provides good support. If you want to get something, you need to pay for it."
"Red Hat Fuse is an expensive tool, though I cannot answer how much it costs as that's confidential."
"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."
"We found other solutions were more costly."
"We are paying around $24 million across five years."
"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."
"Pricing has been something that we have been working with Red Hat on, year over year. We have preferred pricing with the university because we are involved in education and research."
"After doing some Googling and comparisons, the main standouts were MuleSoft and Red Hat Fuse. One of the big factors in our decision to go with Fuse was the licensing cost. It was cheaper to go with Fuse."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
867,783 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise12
 

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 IBM Integration Bus?
The message queue, like, message queue connectors. Then they have a built in connectors for most of the systems, like SAP, oracle database, and this Civil connector is there. Of course, we have thi...
What needs improvement with Red Hat Fuse?
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red H...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat Fuse?
Our company used Red Hat Fuse to integrate layers of numerous applications. The solution has also been used in our organization for orchestration purposes of multiple microservices over the years. ...
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat Fuse?
I would rate Red Hat Fuse as eight out of ten. When the solution was being used in our organization, the JBoss or Red Hat support was great. The solution was highly stable, robust, and scalable, an...
 

Also Known As

IBM WebSphere ESB
Fuse ESB, FuseSource
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Salesbox, €sterreichische Bundesbahnen (€BB), Road Buddy, Swiss Federal Railways, Electricity Supply Board, The Hartree Centre, ESB Networks
Avianca, American Product Distributors (APD), Kings College Hospital, AMD, CenturyLink, AECOM, E*TRADE
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Integration Bus vs. Red Hat Fuse and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,783 professionals have used our research since 2012.