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IBM DataPower Gateway vs MuleSoft API Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (2nd)
MuleSoft API Manager
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
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 MuleSoft API Manager is 4.7%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
D.Rajesh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved Integration Efficiency and Potential for Further Enhancements in Monitoring and User Experience
The policies in MuleSoft API Manager are significant features. We get the policies by default, with more than 25 out-of-the-box policies. If any additional requirement exists specific to the customer, there is a custom policy framework. We can build the policy according to our requirement, and deploy and enable it at the API Manager level to consume across different business groups, environments, or organizations altogether within the platform. Developing the custom policy is not challenging; you just need to follow the custom policy framework to implement. The custom policy and the different levels of SLAs of the API Manager are notable. Regarding the monitoring side of the API Manager, MuleSoft provides substantial monitoring with logs, offering search capability, raw data accessibility, and different subscriptions. With the top tier, integration with third-party platforms such as ELK or Splunk becomes unnecessary because all search capabilities, dashboards, and functional monitoring can be built within the platform itself. This is excellent from the monitoring perspective, and there have been recent improvements focusing on observability. For DevOps, if you want to make your continuous integration and continuous deployment effective, irrespective of the tool, there are options to integrate. For example, you can use the Maven plugin, platform APIs, or CLI to build your end-to-end DevOps cycle.

Quotes from Members

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

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:"
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"Anypoint API Manager's most valuable feature is its connectors."
"It provides all of the robust platform-enabled features."
"The most valuable feature of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the gateway that is provided."
"Its best feature is that its plugins are somewhat unique in the market. We have budgets, Prime membership, and pre-plugins available in the marketplace that we can use immediately."
"The solution has a feature called Flex, which is a low-latency API layer for passthrough APIs where you want data mapping but with very low latency and high scalability."
"The most effective features of Anypoint API Manager for policy enforcement include security enforcement, rate limiting, client enforcement, traffic control, service level agreement policies, and caching policies."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"Anypoint is very capable in terms of scalability."
 

Cons

"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"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."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"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."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"The solution is missing a monetization module."
"The pricing is quite expensive. It should be adjusted to make it more affordable for users."
"There are some loopholes in the security policies that could be improved."
"I am not entirely satisfied with the support from MuleSoft. They can be slow in addressing security vulnerabilities, and transitioning versions is often their solution, with limited support windows causing difficulties in management decisions."
"I think that they can bring some transparency in reference to the terms of the microservices architecture."
"I would like to see more automation. Operations are done manually. It should also automate in the operation."
"The cost for using MuleSoft is approximately $500,000 USD per year. It includes various subscriptions like the signature success plan and platinum subscriptions, making it a costly infrastructure."
"The roadmap could include more GenAI use cases integrated into the platform, focusing on various industry verticals."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."
"The product is expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"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."
"The price of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is very high."
"It is really expensive from a Zimbabwean perspective."
"When it comes to determining price, the pre-sales team interacts with the customer's primary integration team and the price is negotiated based on the specific usage of the system."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"I think that it is pretty expensive."
"Anypoint is the most expensive solution on the market, as far as I know, though it's also the most capable."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as six and a half to seven."
"The pricing is quite reasonable and affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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.
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...
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...
How does Kong Enterprise compare with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager was designed with its users in mind. Though it is a reasonably complex piece of software, it is easy to install and upgrade. While there are different things that ...
How does Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy to implement and learn; it provides several options for deployment, (including ...
What do you like most about Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Anypoint API Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Coca-Cola, Splunk, Citrix, UCSF, Vertu, State of Colorado, National Post, TiVo, Deakin, LLS, Oldcastle Precast, ParcelPoint, Justice Systems, Ube, Sumitomo Corporation, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Groupe Initiatives, Camelot, Panviva
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. MuleSoft API Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.