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Istio vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Service Mesh
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (12th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Istio is 16.6%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 4.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Istio16.6%
VMware Tanzu Platform4.5%
Other78.9%
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

Redentor Del Rosario - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Solution Architect at Civatech Solutions
Leverage cloud security monitoring across multiple providers with robust integration
The best features Istio offers in my experience stand out because my job requires me to look for and use this type of tool, and this fits what I'm looking for, not just because it's free, not just because of the monitoring side, but simply because a lot of what pertains to my project is useful for Istio. One of the good things about the features is that due to the nature of the tool, it is really good for enterprise projects, and it can be helpful for every company. Istio has positively impacted my organization by helping our architecture design and development, and we use this as a mesh, applying it for every single application and using those components, which is helping our company and our clients to do many different aspects for all the use of Istio.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's mutual TLS stands out. It provides secure communication between services within the cluster. Additionally, Istio offers built-in telemetry and tracing with tools like Jaeger, which aids monitoring and troubleshooting."
"Istio makes all that much easier - traffic splits, percentage traffic splits, doing some sort of chaos testing to see how it works."
"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 initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Istio provides tremendous value, particularly in offering TLS and authentication over microservice-to-microservice communication."
"Istio has positively impacted my organization by helping our architecture design and development, and we use this as a mesh, applying it for every single application and using those components, which is helping our company and our clients to do many different aspects for all the use of Istio."
"What I find particularly valuable about Istio is that it is free of cost."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
"We feel very good about these features."
"We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization, and we can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications."
"It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native application in the form of graphical visualization."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
"The initial setup is easy."
"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Istio has issues with performance."
"Handling large-scale environments with proxies can strain resources, but horizontal scaling can improve fault tolerance."
"Istio's documentation is basic and would benefit from more examples."
"Reducing the latency between the control plane and the data plane would be beneficial."
"If someone doesn't understand Kubernetes, they'll have issues working with Istio."
"I've seen applications where they had such strict time constraints, they couldn't use Istio because it was too much overhead."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."
"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

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 ...
What do you like most about Istio?
We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic.
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 ...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.