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Azul Zing vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

Azul Zing
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
16th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (34th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (7th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zing is 2.8%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.0%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway4.0%
Azul Zing2.8%
Other93.2%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

it_user500349 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
It has helped us improve our latency performance drastically
As a large scale high performance trading platform serving the high frequency trading community, latency has always been critical for our clients. Before using Azul Zing JVM, we would have had to spend a lot of effort tuning our JVM GC and profiling our application to minimize latency, which is…
AkshaySawant - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Security features excel but development limitations emerge
We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"No other JVM on the market even comes close to competing with the Azul Zing."
"With minimal effort, Zing has helped us improve our latency performance dramatically."
"Zing has completely solved the garbage collection problem for us."
"The non-stop garbage collector (C4 - Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector) is the most valuable feature."
"Performance of the JVM, especially the C4 Pauseless Garbage Collection, for continuous application execution is the most valuable feature."
"With Zing, we've now been able to re-allocate those tuning resources to general product development."
"GC Pause times are maintained in low milliseconds, which is beneficial for applications with high volume, high memory allocation rate, and a high memory footprint, and it also increases throughput by approximately 20-25% as compared to Oracle Java Development Kit based on some tests that I have done with real applications."
"With minimal effort, Zing has helped us improve our latency performance drastically."
"From a technical point of view, IBM DataPower Gateway performs quite well, so my team had no concerns at all in terms of performance, reliability, and stability."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"IBM DataPower Gateway has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to implement rate limits on the different API usage, which is the benefit."
"We did not experience any downtime, even if the number of transactions increased heavily."
"The appliance has great security and reliability."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"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. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
 

Cons

"We have encounter stability issues and that has been a source of frustration at times."
"The profiling tools included with Zing lag behind those available for Oracle's Java implementation."
"However, like every other great product, there is always something that can be improved."
"Although Azul claims to have a fast warmup, we still experience higher latency for the first trade when our system starts up on Sundays."
"It is extremely expensive."
"The licensing over non-production environments considerably affects the cost of our solution as a software vendor."
"Although Azul claims to have a fast warmup, we still experience higher latency for the first trade when our system starts up on Sundays."
"It is a costly product."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"From the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT language. It does not support multiple languages."
"New users just starting with this product find it a little complex or difficult to use, compared to other products such as AWS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I don't know if the current licensing cost of IBM DataPower Gateway is high, but I think it's acceptable. I don't have any complaints about it.
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
I noticed that the Gateway Script libraries could be improved, as they are not covering everything I need.
What is your primary use case for IBM DataPower Gateway?
The primary purposes for which IBM DataPower Gateway is used include security purposes, and sometimes you need to put some configurations and mapping into the process.
 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Priceline, RBS, Credit Suisse, ING, Creditex, Nielsen, Workday, Saks Fifth Avenue, Entergy, Quotix, Puma and many more.  Visit azul.com for more.
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about Azul Zing vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.