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

Mule ESB 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

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
Red Hat Fuse
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
6th
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 April 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 20.6%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.3%, down from 8.3% 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.
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

"Everything runs in Java, which is a useful feature."
"The connectivity the solution provides is excellent. There are often too many systems that we have to integrate and this helps with that."
"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."
"Mule ESB has a user-friendly design, and everything is in one place. The API and architecture are popular right now. Also, MuleSoft has a large and supportive online community."
"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"Easy connectivity and easy integration."
"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."
"The solution has more tooling and options."
"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."
"This solution's adaptability to our use case has helped us integrate our systems seamlessly."
"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."
"It's very lightweight. There's no need for any specialized tools in order to deploy any service for Red Hat Fuse."
"We use it because it is easy to integrate with any other application...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution nine out of ten."
"We usually had used PowerCenter for master data integration (by replication). But in some cases, it was better to use Fuse for providing the master data online. It doesn't make it necessary to replicate data."
 

Cons

"It would be much more beneficial if the solution included AI and business process management."
"Mule ESB could be more user-friendly. I think users must learn about the architecture before they start coding. The price could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an EDIFACT integration."
"It would be beneficial if users could navigate the UI easily without extensive training or learning curves."
"There are limitations with the subscription model that comes with the product."
"We would like the ability to use our own code. This would allow us to develop customizations with ease. Additionally, it would be nice to have more analytics or insights on the exchanged information between databases."
"The initial setup could be more straightforward."
"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."
"In an upcoming release, I would like to see more additional concept for exception handling, batch processing, and increased integration with other application."
"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."
"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."
"For improvement, they can consider the way we collaborate with other applications...Right now, in Red Hat Fuse, everything is not available under one umbrella."
"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."
"There is definitely a bit of a learning curve."
"The stability of the solution is an area with a shortcoming that needs to be improved."
"Our clients would like to see the user interface improved so that it is more user-friendly."
"In the next release, I'd like more stability and more security overall."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"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."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"The pricing must be improved."
"The price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"This is expensive. In my next project, we had to go to other vendor."
"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 an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"Our license for Red Hat Fuse is around $27,000 per year, which is very expensive."
"The most important feature of Fuse is the cost. It is open source and a cheap option for an ESB. So, most of the clients in the Middle East and Asian countries prefer this ESB. Other ESBs, like MuleSoft and IBM API Connect, are pretty expensive. Because it is open source, Red Hat Fuse is the cheapest solution, providing almost every integration capability."
"My company pays for the license of Red Hat Fuse yearly. At the end of the day, it's a low-cost solution, and its support licenses are still very decently priced versus bigger operators such as IBM, etc. Red Hat Fuse is much more affordable than other solutions. On a scale of one to five, with one being cheap and five being extremely expensive, I'm rating its pricing a one."
"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."
"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."
"We are paying around $24 million across five years."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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 Red Hat Fuse?
The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Fuse?
You need to pay for the license. It's not free. I'm not aware of the exact prices. There are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing since it is a subscription-based solution.
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuse ESB, FuseSource
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
Avianca, American Product Distributors (APD), Kings College Hospital, AMD, CenturyLink, AECOM, E*TRADE
Find out what your peers are saying about Mule ESB vs. Red Hat Fuse and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.