3scale API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

Red Hat and IBM are both solutions in the API Management category. Red Hat is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.5, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.6. Red Hat holds a 2.4% mindshare in APIM, compared to IBM’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of IBM users who would recommend it.

3scale API Management

Read 11 3scale API Management reviews

2,711 Views
2,711 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 29 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

6,131 Views
4,598 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

IBM DataPower Gateway

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM DataPower Gateway and 3scale API Management are two competing products in the API management sector. IBM exhibits stronger security features, whereas 3scale offers greater flexibility and ease of use, giving 3scale an edge for agile API integration.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway provides strong security, data validations, and encryption, making it reliable for organizations needing comprehensive data protection. The appliance version ensures high performance and easy integration. In contrast, 3scale API Management offers robust scalability, API automation, and easy integration with OpenShift clusters, making it highly adaptable for dynamic environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could enhance its deployment complexity and user interface design to improve accessibility. Additional customizable options for API traffic management would also be beneficial. 3scale could improve its advanced security features and extend the support for legacy systems. Enhancing logging capabilities can also foster better monitoring and usage tracking.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower has a complex deployment model, requiring specialized support but benefits from comprehensive inbuilt services. 3scale, however, provides a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer service, allowing users to manage deployments more easily with standard OpenShift practices.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway requires considerable initial investment but offers significant returns for enterprises prioritizing security. While setup costs are high, the long-term benefits in security justify the expenditure. 3scale API Management, on the other hand, is cost-effective with a competitive ROI, owing to its lightweight setup process, making it attractive for organizations looking for scalable, flexible solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed 3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

June 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

3scale API Management

Ranking in API Management

19th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM DataPower Gateway

Ranking in API Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.0%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

Jose Luis Bonilla

CIO at Banco Pichincha España

Provides cost savings while maintaining the same functionality and capabilities

There were two main reasons for consideration. One of them was the cost. It is true that the other solution had more capabilities, but we didn't have plans to use them. We didn't need them, but the cost was slightly higher. Also, we were already working with the Red Hat solution and integrating it with some other solutions we have in place. It was better and more convenient for us. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."

"The product is stable."

"The gateway is the most valuable feature because it makes it possible for us to gather all traffic into one proxy, which is a good thing."

"To me, the most valuable feature of 3scale API Management is that it lets you add a backend to the product. I also like that you can integrate it well with OpenShift clusters, making 3scale API Management a useful solution."

"I like the API automation."

"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."

"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."

"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."

More 3scale API Management pros

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."

"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"

"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."

"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."

"What I like most is the stability."

"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

Cons

"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."

"I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with."

"The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure."

"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."

"What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported."

"What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful."

"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."

"We tried to use the portal, but we decided that it wasn't enough. The content management system (CMS) is not easy to use if you want to customize things, and it's hard to get someone who has the knowledge to work with the CMS."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."

"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."

"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."

"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."

"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."

"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."

"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."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"3scale API Management has reasonable pricing, judging from its competitor, Kong. My organization pays yearly for the 3scale API Management license, though I'm unable to give the exact figure because every single day there are new clusters deployed. I'm in charge of three to four clusters in my team, but give or take, it costs a few thousand lakhs."

"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."

"The cost was around $45,000 per year."

"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."

"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."

"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."

"The product is expensive."

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."

"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."

"The licensing cost is very expensive."

"It is an expensive solution."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about 3scale API Management?

The product is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3scale API Management?

I rate the product’s pricing as two out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?

The deployment process could be easier.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

Compared 16% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 13% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs 3scale API Management

Compared 12% of the time

Apache APISIX vs 3scale API Management

Compared 4% of the time

More 3scale API Management Competitors

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 34% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

NGINX Plus vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

June 2025

Download 3scale API Management product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

April 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Also Known As

No data available

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

Overview

3scale is an API management platform that delivers flexible, highly scalable solutions to package, distribute, control, and monetize your APIs, giving you the power to make the most of your API program.

Share company data, content, or services through Web or mobile applications.
Provide an API to external organizations, internal teams, or both.
Avoid the hassle and constant maintenance of building a solution from scratch.

3scale delivers centralized API management features through a distributed, cloud-hosted layer. The platform includes built-in features to help you build a more successful API program, including access control, rate limits, payment gateway integration, and developer experience tools.

Red Hat

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present. From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform

RBL Bank, Availity

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

June 2025

Free Report: 3scale API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

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