3scale API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

Red Hat and IBM are both solutions in the API Management category. Red Hat is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.0, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3. Red Hat holds a 2.3% mindshare in APIM, compared to IBM’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of IBM users who would recommend it.

3scale API Management

Read 12 3scale API Management reviews

2,257 Views
2,257 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 30 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,383 Views
4,037 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

IBM DataPower Gateway

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM DataPower Gateway and 3scale API Management are two competing products in the API management sector. IBM exhibits stronger security features, whereas 3scale offers greater flexibility and ease of use, giving 3scale an edge for agile API integration.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway provides strong security, data validations, and encryption, making it reliable for organizations needing comprehensive data protection. The appliance version ensures high performance and easy integration. In contrast, 3scale API Management offers robust scalability, API automation, and easy integration with OpenShift clusters, making it highly adaptable for dynamic environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could enhance its deployment complexity and user interface design to improve accessibility. Additional customizable options for API traffic management would also be beneficial. 3scale could improve its advanced security features and extend the support for legacy systems. Enhancing logging capabilities can also foster better monitoring and usage tracking.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower has a complex deployment model, requiring specialized support but benefits from comprehensive inbuilt services. 3scale, however, provides a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer service, allowing users to manage deployments more easily with standard OpenShift practices.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway requires considerable initial investment but offers significant returns for enterprises prioritizing security. While setup costs are high, the long-term benefits in security justify the expenditure. 3scale API Management, on the other hand, is cost-effective with a competitive ROI, owing to its lightweight setup process, making it attractive for organizations looking for scalable, flexible solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed 3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

September 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

3scale API Management

Ranking in API Management

21st

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM DataPower Gateway

Ranking in API Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway	3.7%
3scale API Management	2.3%
Other	94.0%

API Management

Featured Reviews

Jose Luis Bonilla

CIO at Banco Pichincha España

Provides cost savings while maintaining the same functionality and capabilities

There were two main reasons for consideration. One of them was the cost. It is true that the other solution had more capabilities, but we didn't have plans to use them. We didn't need them, but the cost was slightly higher. Also, we were already working with the Red Hat solution and integrating it with some other solutions we have in place. It was better and more convenient for us. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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AkshaySawant

Manager at CSB Bank Ltd

Security features excel but development limitations emerge

We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

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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

"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."

"It simplifies exposing our APIs externally and inherently adds a layer of security, which I see as a positive impact from the product."

"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."

"The standard deployment is very simple."

"To me, the most valuable feature of 3scale API Management is that it lets you add a backend to the product. I also like that you can integrate it well with OpenShift clusters, making 3scale API Management a useful solution."

"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."

"I like the API automation."

More 3scale API Management pros

"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"

"I like the API Gateway feature."

"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."

"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."

"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."

"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."

"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."

"You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

Cons

"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."

"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."

"We tried to use the portal, but we decided that it wasn't enough. The content management system (CMS) is not easy to use if you want to customize things, and it's hard to get someone who has the knowledge to work with the CMS."

"What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported."

"The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure."

"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."

"I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with."

"What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful."

"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."

"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."

"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."

"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."

"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."

"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."

"The DCDR process should be less complex."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."

"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."

"3scale API Management has reasonable pricing, judging from its competitor, Kong. My organization pays yearly for the 3scale API Management license, though I'm unable to give the exact figure because every single day there are new clusters deployed. I'm in charge of three to four clusters in my team, but give or take, it costs a few thousand lakhs."

"The cost was around $45,000 per year."

"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."

"The licensing cost is very expensive."

"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."

"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

12%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about 3scale API Management?

The product is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3scale API Management?

I rate the product’s pricing as two out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?

Not much stands out for me regarding the advantages of this product. We usually don't tinker with it. Developing developer portals could be more standards-based. I think currently it's Ruby-based. ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?

The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?

This product is definitely expensive because if any issue occurs in the live environment or production environment, and our organization faces some issue with the IBM DataPower Gateway, then the IB...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

I have significant experience with the IBM DataPower Gateway. As a security product, it is very good. However, from the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT...

See all answers

Comparisons

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

Compared 17% of the time

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 12% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

Compared 12% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs 3scale API Management

Compared 11% of the time

Apache APISIX vs 3scale API Management

Compared 3% of the time

More 3scale API Management Competitors

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 37% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

NGINX Plus vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

September 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Also Known As

No data available

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

Overview

3scale is an API management platform that delivers flexible, highly scalable solutions to package, distribute, control, and monetize your APIs, giving you the power to make the most of your API program.

Share company data, content, or services through Web or mobile applications.
Provide an API to external organizations, internal teams, or both.
Avoid the hassle and constant maintenance of building a solution from scratch.

3scale delivers centralized API management features through a distributed, cloud-hosted layer. The platform includes built-in features to help you build a more successful API program, including access control, rate limits, payment gateway integration, and developer experience tools.

Red Hat

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present. From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform

RBL Bank, Availity

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

September 2025

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