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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 (11th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Istio is 17.0%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 4.2%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Istio17.0%
VMware Tanzu Platform4.2%
Other78.8%
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

"Istio's best feature is that it's easy to use."
"Istio makes all that much easier - traffic splits, percentage traffic splits, doing some sort of chaos testing to see how it works."
"Istio provides tremendous value, particularly in offering TLS and authentication over microservice-to-microservice communication."
"We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Istio can save you time in terms of network troubleshooting."
"The security feature with mutual TLS authentication, which is identity-based, and the traffic management using cloud load balancers are very valuable."
"What I find particularly valuable about Istio is that it is free of cost."
"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."
"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."
 

Cons

"Istio has issues with performance."
"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's documentation is basic and would benefit from more examples."
"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."
"Reducing the latency between the control plane and the data plane would be beneficial."
"Handling large-scale environments with proxies can strain resources, but horizontal scaling can improve fault tolerance."
"Based on my experience, the solution could be improved. They could simplify the learning process so that users can understand how its features work together, especially with components like Kibana. Learning about the different components is necessary. For instance, you need to understand the traffic flow, potential bottlenecks, and the architecture within Istio."
"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."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."
"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."
"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"
"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 solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source."
"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."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
 

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."
"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 license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"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.
 

Comparisons

 

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.
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