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 8.3, while F5 is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.0. Isito holds a 21.3% mindshare in SM, compared to F5’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Isito users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Istio

Read 11 Istio reviews

1,949 Views
914 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Service-Mesh

Read 1 NGINX Service-Mesh review

679 Views
567 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: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Service Mesh

May 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

Istio

Ranking in Service Mesh

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX Service-Mesh

Ranking in Service Mesh

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Istio is 21.3%, up from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Service-Mesh is 3.9%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

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

"Istio provides tremendous value, particularly in offering TLS and authentication over microservice-to-microservice communication."

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

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

"Istio can save you time in terms of network troubleshooting."

"We can implement load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple service instances. Istio also offers traffic routing capabilities and circuit-breaking functionality. For security, it handles authentication using mutual TLS (mTLS) between services. It can authorize services using JWT tokens. Istio also allows defining policies for rate limiting to control traffic within services."

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

More Istio pros

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

Cons

"I've seen applications where they had such strict time constraints, they couldn't use Istio because it was too much overhead."

"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."

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

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

"If you're a beginner in infrastructure management and networking, learning Istio might pose some challenges. However, if you have some knowledge of networking or service meshes, you should find it manageable. Istio's website offers documentation to guide you through learning."

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

"Handling large-scale environments with proxies can strain resources, but horizontal scaling can improve fault tolerance."

More Istio cons

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

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

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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Istio?

I do not see much room for improvement in Istio for my project as it currently fits my needs perfectly. It would be beneficial if Istio offered paid support options, similar to AWS's enterprise sup...

See all answers

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 41% of the time

HAProxy vs Istio

Compared 33% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Istio

Compared 6% of the time

Traefik Enterprise vs Istio

Compared 4% of the time

HashiCorp Consul vs Istio

Compared 4% of the time

More Istio Competitors

Envoy vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 24% of the time

HashiCorp Consul vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 24% of the time

AWS App Mesh vs NGINX Service-Mesh

Compared 17% of the time

More NGINX Service-Mesh Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Istio

June 2025

Download Istio product report

Buyer's Guide

Service Mesh

May 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: May 2025.

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