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JBoss ESB vs Mule ESB 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

JBoss ESB
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
13th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of JBoss ESB is 2.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mule ESB is 21.0%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

RS
Easy to use with flexible pricing, but needs more flexibility surrounding integrations
The EPA, from what I understand, lacks a lot of features and it doesn't really know how to interface with legacy systems or how to develop APIs for legacy systems. I'm not sure if it is possible, however, we would like to see features that allow for legacy systems so that they can continue to be developed and managed well. The solution should provide some more general studio features. We should be able to manipulate the platform in order to do some integrations on our own. There needs to be a bit more flexibility.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very easy to use. I can download the trial version and just give it a go."
"I like that it's user-friendly. Compared to other ESBs, I find it easier to use. I like it better than other ESBs. I like the connectors, which make calling the APIs through the routers easier."
"We can use Java expressions anywhere in the flow."
"The API management capabilities are exemplary. You can apply security policies to most applications, monitor logs, and get analytical data on request reception, response generation time, associated APIs, endpoints, and inbound and outbound messages."
"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."
"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"Everything runs in Java, which is a useful feature."
"The most valuable feature for Mule is the number of connectors that are available."
"It was pretty fast to develop APIs on this platform, which is something I liked about it. So, the time to value was pretty good."
 

Cons

"The EPA, from what I understand, lacks a lot of features and it doesn't really know how to interface with legacy systems or how to develop APIs for legacy systems."
"It needs more samples. Also, the dependency on Maven should be removed."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"Lacking some connectors that could be included."
"It would be much more beneficial if the solution included AI and business process management."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"From an improvement perspective, there should be fewer coding challenges for users in Mule ESB."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"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 price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"Mule ESB is a costly solution. We pay approximately $80,000 annually for the system. The cost of the number of instances, annual subscription, and cloud hosting services are expensive."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rancore, Sprint, ResMed, Brazil's Ministry of Health, ING Services Polska
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.