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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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
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 August 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 18.7%, down from 22.6% 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 (%)
Mule ESB18.7%
Red Hat Fuse7.0%
Other74.3%
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Maharsh-Kapadia - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms enterprise integration with comprehensive platform and excellent support
The best features of this solution are that everything we get into a single platform, whether it's integration, API, or data modeling; everything is available in one platform. It's a hybrid, including cloud and on-premise solutions with good connectivity and good connectors. From the benefits of using Mule ESB, we could reduce the manual tasks to 50% in one to two years. The cost is still something we are trying to make lower because we see some advantages when we move from point-to-point integration to API-led connectivity. We have seen a lot of reusable assets, so the cost is reduced. Ultimately, we want to see how it's transformed into business revenue; that's what we are still looking into.
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 solution improved my company by modernizing the way we offer services and improving the user experience."
"Once it is started, we don't see any problems on a day to day basis."
"Everything runs in Java, which is a useful feature."
"The most valuable feature is that it's programmer-friendly, so it's very easy to develop APIs."
"Mule ESB helps a lot with our microservice architecture that we're trying to build, and it is still our go-to technology when it comes to that, so it's very promising for us."
"I am impressed with the product's connectors and scalability."
"It is easily deployable and manageable. It has microservices-based architecture, which means that you can deploy the solution based on your needs, and you can manage the solution very easily."
"We can use Java expressions anywhere in the flow."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. We are an enterprise business."
"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."
"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."
"The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful."
"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."
"What I like about Red Hat Fuse is that it's a well-established integration software. I find all aspects of the tool positive."
"With a premium, one can get support 24 hours."
"I found it was quite easy to set up and implement."
 

Cons

"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"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."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"It would be great to see implementing security modules as a feature."
"Mule ESB is more into the latest REST APIs, not much into the SOAP web services. Developing is all about web services and not easy with Mule."
"It would be beneficial if users could navigate the UI easily without extensive training or learning curves."
"I would like to see support for BPM in the next release of this solution."
"Improvements could be made in performance."
"Our clients would like to see the user interface improved so that it is more user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."
"What could be improved in Red Hat Fuse is the deployment process because it's still very heavy. It's containerized, but now with Spring Boot and other microservices-related containers, deployment is still very heavy. Red Hat Fuse still has room for improvement in terms of becoming more containerized and more oriented."
"The pricing model could be adjusted. The price should be lower."
"The stability of the solution is an area with a shortcoming that needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You will not get any support from Mule ESB's team for the tool's community edition...You can get support with the licensed version of Mule ESB."
"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 price of the Mule ESB commercial version is expensive. However, they have a free community version."
"The licensing is yearly, and there are additional fees for services."
"Plan your licensing model (cloud or on-premises or hybrid) that will allow seamless integration with new partners."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are paying around $24 million across five years."
"Red Hat Fuse saved us money. It is a lot easier to license for cloud deployments."
"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."
"The solution doesn't have independent licensing."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise36
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 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 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. ...
 

Comparisons

 

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: July 2025.
866,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.