Mule ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

Salesforce and TIBCO are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0, while TIBCO is ranked #11. Salesforce holds a 15.0% mindshare in E, compared to TIBCO’s 4.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Salesforce users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of TIBCO users who would recommend it.

Mule ESB

Read 54 Mule ESB reviews

3,601 Views
2,665 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Read 12 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus reviews

815 Views
807 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Mule ESB

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus and Mule ESB compete in the middleware software domain. TIBCO stands out in support and pricing satisfaction, while Mule ESB is favored for its rich features and adaptability.

Features: TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus features robust integration capabilities, high scalability, and strong reliability management. Mule ESB is known for its lightweight architecture, flexibility, and extensive community support. TIBCO is tailored for enterprises needing comprehensive integration, while Mule excels in versatility across varied environments.

Room for Improvement: TIBCO can improve by enhancing its user interface, streamlining complex configurations, and broadening community support. Mule ESB could enhance its pricing structure, improve initial setup processes, and offer more direct customer service options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus offers straightforward deployment and strong support, ideal for enterprises valuing structured assistance. Mule ESB's flexible deployment models make it appealing for fast implementation. TIBCO provides traditional customer service, while Mule offers both community-driven and commercial support.

Pricing and ROI: TIBCO generally offers more favorable pricing and ROI, appealing to budget-conscious buyers. Mule ESB, despite higher initial costs, justifies its price with robust features and adaptability, making it appealing for those prioritizing long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

December 2025

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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

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of Mule ESB is 15.0%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 4.8%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Mule ESB	15.0%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus	4.8%
Other	80.2%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

Srinivas-Kanduri

Enterprise integrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Integration architecture has enabled reliable multi-channel messaging and secure API management but now needs better analytics and simpler development

In my opinion, the real-time analytics part of Mule ESB is not up to the mark for the decision-making process. While there are some analytics features, they lack the standards needed for enterprise use. Compared to other analytics tools such as Power BI, MuleSoft falls short.Points for improvement in Mule ESB definitely include enhancing the analytics capabilities because currently, they rely on external logging tools such as Splunk or ELK, which is lagging behind compared to other tools such as Workato that offer more analytical features. Additionally, issues arise with AI-based use cases due to dependencies on Salesforce tools such as agent force, making development more complicated when it should be more independent. Developing AI-based agents without being tied to Salesforce applications could also enhance functionality.

Read full review

Mustofa Yonus

Cheif Specialist- Licensing Systems at Roads & Transport Authority

A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"For complex cases, we employ the SSLi engine, whereas for simpler ones like healthcare or response data, such as EDI 270 or 271. We prefer to use an external XRT engine instead of handling it within the ESB for ease of management."

"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."

"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."

"Everything runs in Java, which is a useful feature."

"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."

"One of the key features I find unique and most useful in Mule ESB is the loosely coupled architecture, allowing for multi-delivery where the same data can be sent to multiple systems."

"The solution has a good graphical interface."

More Mule ESB pros

"TIBCO has the platform in terms of speed and ease of use."

"The product’s most valuable feature is stability."

"It's very stable and reliable."

"The technology is really easy to learn."

"It is easy to develop. It has a very wide range of features. The older versions are very stable, and there are no issues with the product."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."

"The solution is very stable."

"The GUI and IDE features of this solution are easy to work with and to develop. We find application management easy using this solution. It is a stable product"

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus pros

Cons

"The stability could be improved."

"The solution's setup needs to be a bit more straightforward and its support needs to respond faster."

"Mule ESB isn't as secure as IBM. Financial companies go with IBM for that reason."

"The solution isn't as stable as we'd like it to be. There are some ongoing issues and therefore Mule has to provide frequent patches. Mule's core IP should be more stable overall."

"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."

"Community editions need more attention."

"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."

"Licensing cost could be improved in this regard. Overall, the product is a bit on the expensive side."

More Mule ESB cons

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"We'd like to see improvements in product support."

"Issues with the support, the fees, and the termination of the professional services are reasons we are looking for other solutions."

"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."

"I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors."

"The intermediate version that we are using has stability issues. These stability issues should be resolved, but it seems like TIBCO is not focusing on resolving these issues. The resolution timelines are quite high even for high-priority incidents. Its price should be lower. Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."

"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."

"If TIBCO could be able to sort the size of their base image in the Container edition, it would be really marvelous. Right now it's around 299 MB. We'd really want it to reduce to a few MBs."

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."

"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."

"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 solution is expensive."

"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."

"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."

More Mule ESB pricing and cost advice

"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."

"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."

"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."

"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."

"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."

"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	38

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

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 ...

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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...

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What do you like most about Mule ESB?

The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.

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Comparisons

IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 26% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs Mule ESB

Compared 10% of the time

webMethods.io vs Mule ESB

Compared 8% of the time

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs Mule ESB

Compared 7% of the time

IBM DataPower Gateway vs Mule ESB

Compared 4% of the time

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IBM Integration Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 23% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 18% of the time

JBoss ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 10% of the time

IBM WebSphere Message Broker vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 8% of the time

Workday Business Process Framework vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 8% of the time

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Mule ESB

January 2026

Download Mule ESB product report

Buyer's Guide

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

January 2026

Download TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus product report

Also Known As

No data available

ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Overview

For companies looking to modernize and unlock the value of existing on-premises systems and applications, an enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture serves as a critical foundation layer for SOA. When deployed as an ESB, the Mule runtime engine of Anypoint Platform combines the power of data and application integration across legacy systems and SaaS applications, with a seamless path to the other capabilities of Anypoint Platform and the full power of API-led connectivity.

Salesforce

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is a platform for developing, deploying, and managing applications that conform to a service-oriented architecture. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is a lightweight enterprise service bus that helps organizations bridge the mediation gap in their SOA infrastructure. It reduces complexity and increases flexibility and reuse by replacing hard-coded service dependencies with configuration, and can be used to onboard services from a third-party environment or a TIBCO-based infrastructure. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus provides service mediation capabilities to the TIBCO ActiveMatrix SOA platform. Service mediation allows you to adapt to changing requirements for developing mediation flows.

TIBCO

Sample Customers

Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot

Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia

Buyer's Guide

Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

December 2025

Free Report: Mule ESB vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

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