F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs WSO2 Identity Server comparison

The compared F5 and WSO2 solutions aren't in the same category. F5 is ranked #15 in WSG , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 1.4% mindshare in the category. WSO2 is ranked #12 in CIaA , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of WSO2 users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...

Read 17 F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) reviews

2,939 Views
411 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

WSO2 Identity Server

Read 11 WSO2 Identity Server reviews

883 Views
221 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...

WSO2 Identity Server

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) and WSO2 Identity Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG).

To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

July 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

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (15th), Network Access Control (NAC) (7th), SSL VPN (5th), Remote Access (10th), Access Management (10th)

WSO2 Identity Server

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (12th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is designed for Secure Web Gateways (SWG) and holds a mindshare of 1.4%, up 0.4% compared to last year.
WSO2 Identity Server, on the other hand, focuses on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), holds 1.6% mindshare, down 3.1% since last year.

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)

Featured Reviews

Ashish Kumar Rai

Associate Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Offers remote access control, good GUI and easy to configure

I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal. In the APM interface itself, they could add direct hyperlinks to relevant online documentation. This would provide easy access to admin guides and other resources when working within the GUI.

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Ritesh_Shah

Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Utilizing key management and seamless single sign-on integration for enhanced user profile management

WSO2 Identity Server's key management feature stands out as a particularly impactful feature for enhancing security. Additionally, from a user perspective, the self-user portal and user profile management capabilities are highly valuable. It allows users to manage their profiles, change passwords, and offers a self-care portal type of functionality. The single sign-on capability integrates seamlessly with various platforms, including Google, Facebook, LDAP, and Active Directory, which supports rapid product launches.

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

"Stickiness is the most valuable feature of the product."

"The performance of the solution is valuable."

"Our organization is small - a college with about 3,500 students. We use F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager to protect our site, especially from the Iranian attacks we faced last year. We restrict access to only inside the country."

"On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten."

"Our customers have never complained about the stability"

"A lot of features are useful to me, including mostly the authentication, SAML, or SSO, with no sign-on."

"In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options and policy configuration tools in the GUI. It's good and good enough to work."

"The product allows us to create customized portals for your users."

More F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) pros

"I am completely satisfied with WSO2 Identity Server and would definitely recommend it to other companies."

"We use the solution for customer identity management, authenticating customers coming in through a web portal."

"I would rate the solution's stability eight or nine out of ten."

"The solution gets the job done, and we don't have to do the main configuration."

"The product provides easy integration between API manager and IT server components."

"Comprehensive ecosystem."

"The keystore feature has been most valuable for us."

"It's very easy to implement everything."

More WSO2 Identity Server pros

Cons

"The solution is quite costly."

"I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal."

"The technical support’s response time must be improved."

"We do not have knowledgeable support teams locally."

"The price of this product can be improved."

"If I could copy and paste objects instead of picking and configuring them from scratch each time, it would be great."

"The initial setup was complex."

"Regarding price, I'm not directly involved in purchasing, but our CIO thinks the product is very expensive. He's considering moving from the tool to Citrix NetScaler WAF because it's cheaper, and we already have Citrix for VDI. We got NetScaler almost free as part of our VDI deal. Three years ago, I convinced him to use the solution because it's better, but now, with budget constraints, he may want to switch."

More F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) cons

"There needs to be a good support model and easy-to-understand documentation."

"This solution does not have BPM workflows already integrated, we had to integrate the BPM module externally. They do not provide full-featured auditing and certification modules out of the box."

"The solution seems to be pretty outdated."

"This solution requires extensive knowledge to be used effectively as certain areas of its use are not user friendly."

"The high availability architecture has to be improved."

"The solution could improve its development from a user perspective."

"The solution's licensing model could be more flexible, and pricing could be improved."

"Sometimes working with the code is difficult because I search for documentation about the code and how to work with the code, which is where I believe they should improve, by providing some documentation on how to work with the code."

More WSO2 Identity Server cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Recently, they have simplified the licensing"

"The product is very expensive."

"The tool is a little bit expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"At this time we are working with the open-source version."

"I rate the product price an eight out of ten. There is a need to pay more for the extra features provided by the solution."

"WSO2 Identity Server is not an expensive solution."

"They should bring in some good pricing models to host the marketplace."

"I have found the solutions license is priced competitively compared to others."

"We have to take their support, but that is a minimal charge if I'm comparing it to other identity managers."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?

In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options and policy configuration tools in the GUI. It's good and good enough to work.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?

F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchasing a Bentley as opposed to an Audi.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM ( /categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm-and-observability )) does not have a direction for SaaS. Most solutions focus more on remote access and acc...

See all answers

What do you like most about WSO2 Identity Server?

The product provides easy integration between API manager and IT server components.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Identity Server?

The pricing is currently the same as the API Manager, so it's not surprising. Since we used it primarily for SSO and the self portal, there were no additional pricing concerns.

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 Identity Server?

Currently, all required features are supported. If new use cases for artificial intelligence arise, it could be beneficial to incorporate those. However, for our current projects, WSO2 Identity Ser...

See all answers

Comparisons

Ivanti Connect Secure vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Compared 8% of the time

BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiProxy vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Compared 6% of the time

Citrix Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

Compared 5% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) Competitors

Microsoft Entra ID vs WSO2 Identity Server

Compared 55% of the time

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs WSO2 Identity Server

Compared 24% of the time

SailPoint Identity Security Cloud vs WSO2 Identity Server

Compared 22% of the time

More WSO2 Identity Server Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)

August 2025

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 Identity Server

July 2025

Download WSO2 Identity Server product report

Also Known As

F5 Access Policy Manager

No data available

Overview

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is an access management proxy solution for managing global access to the enterprise networks, cloud providers, applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Through a single management interface, BIG-IP APM consolidates remote, mobile, network, virtual, and web access.

BIG-IP APM can also serve as a bridge between modern and classic authentication and authorization protocols and methods. For applications which are unable to support modern authentication and authorization protocols, like SAML and OAuth with OIDC, but which do support classic authentication methods, BIG-IP APM converts user credentials to the appropriate authentication standard supported by the application.

BIG-IP APM Benefits:

Ease of use
Flexibility
Ability to integrate with other systems
Security features
Granular access control
Responsive and helpful support team

BIG-IP APM Features:

Support for Identity Aware Proxy (IAP) enabling Zero Trust application access
Context-based authorization with dynamic L4/L7 ACLs
Integration with third-party MFA solutions
DTLS 2.0 mode for delivering and securing applications
SAML 2.0 identity federation support
Support for OAuth 2.0 authorization protocol
SSO support for classic authentication (Kerberos, header- based, etc.), credential caching, OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0, and FIDO2 (U2F)
AAA server authentication and high-availability
Integration with leading IAM vendor products (Microsoft, Okta, Ping Identity)
BIG IP Edge Client and F5 Access integrate with VMware Horizon ONE (AirWatch), Microsoft Intune and IBM MaaS360
Risk-based access leveraging third-party UEBA and risk engines (HTTP Connector)

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by BIG-IP APM users.

Mahmmoud Rabie, Senior Site Reliability Engineer, writes that BIG-IP APM is "A highly stable solution for load balancing, but the initial setup is complex."

Clyde Livingston, Senior Process Specialist at Telstra, says that BIG-IP APM is "Easy to use, useful access remotely, but lacking stability."

Chris Lam, Senior Solution Consultant at Macroview Telecom Limited, states that BIG-IP APM is "Useful for remote access VPN and VPI integration with VMware.

WSO2 Identity Server can be used to simplify identity and access management (IAM) related activities in the enterprise. The product is based on open standards and open source principles. WSO2 Identity Server comes with seamless, easy to use integration capabilities that help connect applications, user stores, directories and identity management systems.

WSO2

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

Nutanix, ELM, AlmavivA, BDigital, StubHub, M-creations, MedVision360

Buyer's Guide

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July 2025

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