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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)
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 October 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 20.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.0%, 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 Bus20.4%
Red Hat Fuse7.0%
Other72.6%
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

"I recommend it for large enterprises but only for specific use cases. You need to have a relatively mature integration practice in your organization to leverage its capabilities fully."
"It makes the communication between multiple and heterogeneous applications so easy. We can bring together different messages and applications from different platforms and connect them through IBM Integration Bus."
"The stability is mostly pretty good."
"IBM Integration Bus' most valuable features are its performance, fast and easy development, and easy support."
"I have rated IBM Integration Bus a 10 out of 10."
"The error handling and monitoring functionalities of IBM Integration Bus are very good."
"It aligns well with containerized environments, which increases its scalability and high availability."
"The interface is quite stable."
"The routing system of the product supports Camel routing"
"The most valuable part of Fuse is the fact that it's based on Red Hat Apache Camel. It is really good that it already comes with so many different connectors. That makes it relatively easy to use. We use their XML definition to define the routes, making it really easy to define the routing."
"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 support training that comes with the product is amazing."
"The most valuable feature is that it's the same as Apache Camel."
"More than a feature, I would say that the reliability of the platform is the most valuable aspect."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. We are an enterprise business."
"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

"I don't mind the pricing."
"The performance needs to be enhanced when working with the Toolkit."
"Technical support is something that should be better."
"I would like to be able to build an Integration Bus cluster that is active-active."
"There is room for improvement in providing more specific error messages and error criteria."
"Licensing is too high. It is quite expensive."
"The solution needs to simplify its documentation, such as the user and operation manuals, to make them even easier to understand."
"The solution needs instruction or guidance."
"The monitoring experience should be better."
"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."
"What needs to be improved in Red Hat Fuse is on the development side because when you use it for development purposes, it lacks a user interface compared to what MuleSoft has, so it's a bit difficult for users."
"The web tools need to be updated."
"Containerization is one key area where the product can improve"
"The documentation for Fuse can be improved because, while it is very detailed and extensive, it is not too intuitive for someone that has to deliver some kind of troubleshooting services. In particular, for installation, re-installation, or upgrades, I find that the documentation can be improved."
"There is definitely a bit of a learning curve."
"While it's a good platform, the pricing is a bit high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable considering the features we receive."
"Support costs are high compared to the competition. Otherwise, the support is good."
"IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model."
"IBM Integration Bus itself is prices fair but App-Connect is a bit expensive which we use in conjunction with it."
"IBM is expensive."
"For small companies, First of all, there are a lot of free products that could be used for integration. It can use the cloud or new implementation in the past. But if the tool is IBM, the official box in your company, you can make your submission and also publish the cloud to the work file. But let’s say, if you are working with premises, then you have to buy a reasonable main full support and gain experience with your product."
"It is not cheap. It has its cost. It is one of the high-cost solutions."
"The maintenance and support of the product are very expensive."
"Red Hat Fuse saved us money. It is a lot easier to license for cloud deployments."
"The solution doesn't have independent licensing."
"This is an expensive product. It costs a lot and although it's worth the money, the explanations that we need to give to our top executives are highly complicated."
"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."
"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."
"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."
"Our license for Red Hat Fuse is around $27,000 per year, which is very expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
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.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.