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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 July 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM Integration Bus is 21.9%, up from 21.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.2%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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

"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."
"Web interface, REST API for viewing services, admin, stats, and deployment are premium features, which makes IIB stand among its competition."
"It has the ability to be deployed without rewriting the code."
"IBM Integration Bus has been effective in facilitating our messaging and service-oriented architecture (SOA) or bus architecture. So, we're already utilizing it to transform the data from the source it's sending. It converts the data from the format the source sends it into the format the destination system requires. So we are transforming the messages, which are required by the destination system; that's the one way."
"It is user-friendly and a value-added tool for banks and other verticals."
"I use the integration of Kafka and the message flow, which is really good. It is also good for moving any file from one location to another. Using IBM Integration Bus in the data stage is pretty simple. You can see the preview and other things. The MQ server integrated with IBM Integration Bus is really great. I don't have to do a lot of configuration from that side. It is really good."
"The product is a user-customized tool so that you can adjust it to your specific needs pretty well with little trouble."
"I have found the inbound and outbound adapter confirmations valuable."
"The solution has more tooling and options."
"The most valuable feature is that it's the same as Apache Camel."
"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 most valuable feature is the software development environment."
"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."
"With a premium, one can get support 24 hours."
"This solution's adaptability to our use case has helped us integrate our systems seamlessly."
"One of the features I found most valuable in Red Hat Fuse is that it has a lot of containers so you won't have to worry about load balancing. In the past, there was a cut-off, but nowadays, Red Hat Fuse is moving off of that, so my team is utilizing it the most for load balancing, particularly running goal applications and three to five containers. There's automatic load balancing so you won't have to worry too much. I also found that component-wise, you don't have to do much coding in Red Hat Fuse because everything is configurable, for example, XML-based coding. Coding isn't that difficult. Performance-wise, I also found the solution to be quite good and its processing is quite fast. My team is processing a huge amount of data with the help of Red Hat Fuse."
 

Cons

"The cloud deployment of the IBM Integration Bus should be made easier."
"The solution is complex and there is a need for more resources and greatly improved quality."
"Session management can sometimes hand forcing server reboots."
"The solution needs to simplify its documentation, such as the user and operation manuals, to make them even easier to understand."
"I would like to be able to run and install this solution on different platforms."
"I would rate the support from IBM Integration Bus a seven out of ten. They are very helpful but sometimes it takes too long for them to respond."
"This solution would benefit from improvements to the configuration interface."
"IBM Integration Bus could improve by having a more lightweight installation. Additionally, automation could improve."
"Containerization is one key area where the product can improve"
"The main issue with Red Hat Fuse is the outdated and scattered documentation."
"The solution will be discontinued in 2024."
"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."
"Red Hat is not easy to learn. You can learn it but you sometimes need external expertise to implement solutions."
"Our clients would like to see the user interface improved so that it is more user-friendly."
"While it's a good platform, the pricing is a bit high."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is high."
"The price of the IBM Integration Bus is expensive. If you compare the price to the cloud version you can purchase what you need but the on-premise version price is flat."
"IBM Integration Bus itself is prices fair but App-Connect is a bit expensive which we use in conjunction with it."
"IBM provides a quite complicated licensing model."
"As customers, we always try to buy things as cheaply as possible. But the price for the IBM Integration Bus is fine. When we compare it to competitors, it's pretty much the same. However, there are a lot of open-source integration platforms coming to the market as well. So overall, the price is fine as far as licensed products are concerned."
"Pricing is on par with its competition."
"IBM is expensive."
"It is a highly-priced solution."
"We use the standard license, but you need the container platform in order to run it."
"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."
"The solution doesn't have independent licensing."
"We are paying around $24 million across five years."
"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."
"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."
"This is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
 

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 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 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

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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.