IBM DataPower Gateway vs Layer7 API Management comparison

IBM and Broadcom are both solutions in the API Management category. IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5, while Broadcom is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.6. IBM holds a 3.8% mindshare in APIM, compared to Broadcom’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 29 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,878 Views
4,409 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Layer7 API Management

Read 112 Layer7 API Management reviews

3,814 Views
3,814 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

Layer7 API Management

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM DataPower Gateway and Layer7 API Management are competitors in the API management space. Layer7 API Management appears to have the upper hand due to its versatile feature set and ease of use.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway offers extensive encryption and threat protection features, scalability for large IT infrastructures, and seamless integrations. Layer7 API Management provides API customization flexibility, strong analytics tools for better decision-making, and adaptability to enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could improve in terms of ease of deployment and reducing complexity in integration. Enhanced user interface and simplified configuration options would also be beneficial. Layer7 API Management may benefit from enhanced monitoring capabilities, a more robust management interface, and faster release of new features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway's advanced security measures make its deployment more complex, but it offers dedicated customer support. Layer7 API Management allows for quicker setup and integration, offering strong support that caters to agile business operations.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway has a higher initial setup cost justified by its security and scalability features. Layer7 API Management offers better long-term ROI due to lower initial investment and a comprehensive feature set, providing significant value over time.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Layer7 API Management Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Layer7 API Management

July 2025

Download the complete report

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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

IBM DataPower Gateway

Ranking in API Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (2nd)

Layer7 API Management

Ranking in API Management

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.8%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Layer7 API Management is 2.8%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts

While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.

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NikhilChaudhari

Senior Associate Software at Intelliswift Software

Valued for its drag-and-drop functionalities, the available policy options, and the excellent security features

I work as a PG developer, primarily dealing with Layer7 API Management and MuleSoft API management. My focus is mainly on VM management platforms such as Layer7 and Apigee Layer7 API Management is most valued for its drag-and-drop functionalities, the available policy options, and the excellent…

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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

"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution is robust."

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

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."

"I like the API Gateway feature."

"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."

"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"This product, at first blush, looks something like it's one of those weekend warrior tools, but it's not. It's an enterprise-class tool with the kind of usability that you wouldn't expect. And with that usability - how do you have your cake and eat it too? Well, it's because of the product's extensibility. It's very well-integrated with your existing Java library of processes and procedures, as well as your ability to write new extensions to it. You get so much of the base functionality but you don't give up the ability customize."

"Every API that we get from external or from internal goes through this layer first, and it should not be a bottleneck. That was the problem we had before. Now it's no longer a bottleneck. It's more like a throughput, this process is less than 10 milliseconds for any particular API."

"API Management makes dealing with APIs easier. It'll help you to move ahead on your API application journey. The solution allows developers to create more advanced security policies"

"You can create little, custom Java assertions that you can insert to do your business logic, which might not be covered by the commercial product out-of-the-box."

"It can be scaled as we need. And it can be used in different regions. We have different data centers in the U.S. and Beijing. We use it on-premise, on-cloud, and it can be hosted and used at any place and scaled across the regions."

"The administration interface (Policy Manager) is very easy to understand and use."

"I appreciate Layer 7 API management for its comprehensive approach to the entire API lifecycle, including governance, management, and analytics."

"For developers to be able to come, sign up, or find APIs."

More Layer7 API Management pros

Cons

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

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."

"It is a costly product."

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

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

"In terms of OEM support, it is poor. If I raise a CBRT one, as per the SLA, they should respond in one hour, however, sometimes it takes four or five hours to respond."

"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."

"They should improve the solution's clustering features."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"Layer7 API Management could improve by assing more portal-based capabilities."

"The product's initial setup phase is not very straightforward, making it an area where improvements are required."

"One area where it certainly needs to improve is the way it allocates requests, in terms of rate limiting. Also, there is no native Kafka connectivity."

"One of the features that the tool provides is the ability to simply onboard new APIs to an existing security platform. We build all the policies for security upfront, and then we can add those policies pretty simply and straightforwardly to any new API that gets developed in the enterprise."

"The security protocols in CA's product, for financial services, weren't as good as those in API Connect."

"Provide complete documentation with examples of usage on its build in assertion/function."

"The cloud-native architecture of the product needs improvement."

"The Policy Manager tool that is used to manage the solution is very heavy to use because it is based in Java. Sometimes it takes a long time to load. There could be some improvements to it. If they could make Policy Manager on a web page that would be a good alternative."

More Layer7 API Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."

"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 licensing cost is very expensive."

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."

"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."

"The product is 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."

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"We weren't comfortable with the pricing of licensing. It was slightly more expensive than its competitors."

"It's my manager who takes care of the pricing. But I keep on hearing that it's a little pricey, it's on the higher side. That is what he says."

"Pricing for Layer7 API Management is excellent, so it's an eight out of ten. The product is less expensive than other solutions. Layer7 API Management charges you based on the number of transactions, so the enterprise-level pricing my company got was excellent."

"At the time we bought the product it was a perpetual users license and there has been no need for additional licensing fees."

"The product is moderately priced."

"APIs can be developed to provide security. We can show them in one single pane of glass, such as the CA API Management API Developer Portal. It is there that we can provide the monetization for their APIs and what is happening on third-party applications, like Paytm or BookMyShow."

"There are some costs for maintenance that we are charged, but that seems fair because we get the support."

"Pricing is competitive. CA is ready to offer attractive discounts."

More Layer7 API Management pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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?

I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...

See all answers

What do you like most about Layer7 API Management?

The solution's technical support is good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Layer7 API Management?

Pricing is more than average. While I am used to Layer7 API Management ( /products/layer7-api-management-reviews ), seeing other products makes the tool's pricing seem high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Layer7 API Management?

Broadcom's push for upgrades from version nine to ten, ten to 10.3, and onwards to twelve needs improvement in migration processes, especially with service dependencies. The migration path sometime...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 34% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Apigee vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 26% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 14% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 12% of the time

webMethods.io vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 3% of the time

More Layer7 API Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

August 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

Layer7 API Management

August 2025

Download Layer7 API Management product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

CA API Management, CA Live API Creator, Espresso Logic, CA API Gateway

Overview

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

Layer7 API Management is a comprehensive solution that enables organizations to securely expose, manage, and monetize their APIs.

It provides features such as API gateway, developer portal, analytics, and security to ensure seamless integration and control over API traffic.

With Layer7 API Management, businesses can streamline their API operations and drive innovation.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Oracle 4. Salesforce 5. SAP 6. Cisco 7. Dell 8. HP 9. Adobe 10. VMware 11. Accenture 12. Capgemini 13. Deloitte 14. PwC 15. Ernst & Young 16. Infosys 17. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) 18. Wipro 19. Cognizant 20. HCL Technologies 21. Tech Mahindra 22. Fujitsu 23. Hitachi 24. NEC 25. NTT Data 26. Ericsson 27. Nokia 28. Siemens 29. AT&T 30. Verizon 31. Vodafone 32. Orange

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Layer7 API Management

July 2025

Free Report: IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Layer7 API Management

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