Istio vs NGINX Service-Mesh comparison

Isito and F5 are both solutions in the Service Mesh category. Isito is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while F5 is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Isito holds a 19.0% mindshare in SM, compared to F5’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Isito users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Istio

Read 12 Istio reviews

1,657 Views
1,657 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Service-Mesh

Read 1 NGINX Service-Mesh review

473 Views
473 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Istio

NGINX Service-Mesh

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Istio and NGINX Service-Mesh based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Isito, HAProxy, Kong and others in Service Mesh.

To learn more, read our detailed Service Mesh Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Service Mesh

September 2025

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Helped 868,787 peers since 2012

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

Istio

Ranking in Service Mesh

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX Service-Mesh

Ranking in Service Mesh

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Istio is 19.0%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Service-Mesh is 3.8%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Service Mesh Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Istio	19.0%
NGINX Service-Mesh	3.8%
Other	77.2%

Service Mesh

Featured Reviews

JETTI DINESH REDDY

Infra , DevSecOps & Automation Architect at Zuellig Pharma

Enhanced microservice security and advanced traffic management and good authentification

When our developers are building the microservices, instead of imposing additional burdens or additional thinking on them, especially as part of network features such as traffic management, security, or observability, we deploy something from the infrastructure side, so developers need only focus…

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Fernando Silva

Ingeniero at Servicios Eyenet S.A De C.V

A cost-effective and fully integrated service mesh that has good adaptability

The initial setup for NGINX Service-Mesh is straightforward. I have twenty engineers specifically for SI deployments, and we rely on gnet environments. Typically, we have many users, maybe a thousand users, and in Mexico, working with EC Telecom, we serve around five million users for the ISP solution, including internet and service provider solutions.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I find particularly valuable about Istio is that it is free of cost."

"We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"What I find particularly valuable about Istio is that it is free of cost."

"The security feature with mutual TLS authentication, which is identity-based, and the traffic management using cloud load balancers are very valuable."

"The most valuable features of Istio are the traffic management and the Sidecar they inject, which greatly helps secure the application."

"The load balancing, service application, and monitoring of the life of the service are valuable features. We use it for authentication of call services, load balancing the calls among the service providers on service instances, and monitoring the health of the services."

"Istio makes all that much easier - traffic splits, percentage traffic splits, doing some sort of chaos testing to see how it works."

More Istio pros

"The solution is cost-effective and has good adaptability."

Cons

"Reducing the latency between the control plane and the data plane would be beneficial."

"Istio needs to be more mature and user-friendly."

"For our use case that we applied it to, there were graph queues and the calls that were coming in. There were the things that we couldn't apply at the time, but it kind of worked."

"It would be beneficial if Istio offered paid support options, similar to AWS's enterprise support, to quickly resolve issues that might affect production."

"Istio has issues with performance."

"If someone doesn't understand Kubernetes, they'll have issues working with Istio."

"It would be good if the solution had more community forums."

"Istio's documentation is basic and would benefit from more examples."

More Istio cons

"NGINX Service Mesh could be improved by integrating more intelligence and stability through certifications and SSL certificates."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the tool's open-source version, so there are no hidden fees or additional costs associated with it."

"You can deploy Istio free of cost and don't need to pay for it."

"It is on the less expensive side. It provides a significant saving for us in terms of cost and other things. It is open-source. We just download it from the open-source framework and use it."

"The pricing for NGINX Service-Mesh is very reasonable, offering us scalability and cost-effectiveness."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

25%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Educational Organization

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	3

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Istio?

Istio provides a significant saving for us in terms of costs since it is open source. However, Istio can still come at a price. It has a steep learning curve and might require more manpower hours ...

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What do you like most about Istio?

We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic.

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What needs improvement with Istio?

The positive changes include improvements in efficiency, and while I think the free aspect is good, it's crucial to be aware that sometimes cost will give you a good way for your needs, meaning it ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Service-Mesh?

The pricing for NGINX Service-Mesh is very reasonable, offering us scalability and cost-effectiveness.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX Service-Mesh?

NGINX Service Mesh could be improved by integrating more intelligence and stability through certifications and SSL certificates. Additionally, I need to review the solution for DDoS environments to...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for NGINX Service-Mesh?

I'm using it to deliver applications and run easy telecom in Mexico. It currently helps distribute ISP, retail, and telecom environments.

See all answers

Comparisons

Kong Mesh vs Istio

Compared 36% of the time

HAProxy vs Istio

Compared 32% of the time

Envoy vs Istio

Compared 6% of the time

Traefik Enterprise vs Istio

Compared 6% of the time

HashiCorp Consul vs Istio

Compared 5% of the time

More Istio Competitors

Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 23% of the time

HashiCorp Consul vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 19% of the time

Envoy vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 18% of the time

AWS App Mesh vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 14% of the time

More NGINX Service-Mesh Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Istio

September 2025

Download Istio product report

Buyer's Guide

Service Mesh

September 2025

Download NGINX Service-Mesh product report

Overview

Connect
Intelligently control the flow of traffic and API calls between services, conduct a range of tests, and upgrade gradually with red/black deployments.

Secure
Automatically secure your services through managed authentication, authorization, and encryption of communication between services.

Control
Apply policies and ensure that they’re enforced, and that resources are fairly distributed among consumers.

Observe
See what's happening with rich automatic tracing, monitoring, and logging of all your services.

Isito

Designed to be lightweight and seamless, NGINX Service Mesh scales from open source projects to a fully supported, secure, and scalable enterprise class solution that enables users to take control of Kubernetes with a turnkey, secure, service-to-service solution featuring a unified data plane for ingress and egress management in a single configuration.

NGINX Service Mesh provides the seamless and transparent load balancing, reverse proxy, traffic routing, identity, and encryption features needed for production-grade service mesh deployments. When paired with the NGINX Plus-based version of NGINX Ingress Controller, it provides a unified data plane that can be managed with a single configuration.

Find out what your peers are saying about Isito, HAProxy, Kong and others in Service Mesh. Updated: September 2025.

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