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IBM DataPower Gateway vs WSO2 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 (7th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.9%, up from 4.1% 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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration
I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The solution is robust."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The product is stable...The product is scalable."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"It's a good product."
"Its open-source features are very good, especially for your production work."
"As far as I am aware this solution is the first API Publisher that allows you to create and publish API and to manage the API lifecycle."
"It's very scalable, which is one of the best features."
"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."
"The scalability is fine for our purposes."
"WSO2 API Manager is a stable solution."
"The solution is open-source."
 

Cons

"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"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."
"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."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product. Sometimes, when the customer use case is just a very small subset of what's being offered in IBM DataPower Gateway, then the product can be expensive, making my company lose some of the opportunities because of the expensive pricing. A lower price point for IBM DataPower Gateway, even if that results in a less feature-rich version, would be appreciated. In terms of additional features that I'd like to see in the next release of IBM DataPower Gateway, nothing specific comes to mind because IBM constantly improves its standards and provides quarterly updates to the product, so it's quite fine."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool."
"API Manager is not easy to scale because some of its components lack scalability. It's a difficult point. Especially because companies are so cloud-based these days, microservice scalability is a major thing."
"They don't have different URLs for administrators."
"I can say that user management is not really flexible. So, if I want to create 1,000 store users, I can't do it as a publisher. You have to register as a store user using the store URL."
"We found WSO2 API Manager to be a bit complex."
"Basically, mTLS is a certificate-based communication protocol that WSO2 API Manager doesn't support."
"The initial setup can be difficult."
"We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The product is expensive."
"I think the other competitors that are providing the same solution are quite expensive. WSO2 API Manager is quite cheap."
"I am using the free version."
"It's not expensive, but it could be cheaper."
"WSO2 API Manager is quite an expensive tool. I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."
"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."
"WSO2 API Manager is an open-source solution."
"It is costly, around ten thousand per year, per instance"
"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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...
What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?
It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.
What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing. It is uncertain whethe...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
We use WSO2 API Manager ( /products/wso2-api-manager-reviews ) to integrate our telecom products with third-party REST APIs. We are orchestrating services where our business process defines the int...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.