IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

IBM API Connect and IBM DataPower Gateway are both solutions in the API Management category. IBM API Connect is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM DataPower Gateway is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.6. IBM API Connect holds a 6.3% mindshare in APIM, compared to IBM DataPower Gateway’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM API Connect users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of IBM DataPower Gateway users who would recommend it.

IBM API Connect

Read 76 IBM API Connect reviews

7,606 Views
4,141 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 29 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

4,598 Views
3,299 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM API Connect

IBM DataPower Gateway

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and IBM API Connect compete in the enterprise solutions category, each offering unique benefits. IBM API Connect generally has the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and flexibility, aligning well with strategic needs.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway provides high-security features, seamless integration, and scalability for varied enterprise environments. In contrast, IBM API Connect offers complete API lifecycle management, robust analytics, and detailed monitoring capabilities that are crucial for effective API development.

Room for Improvement: DataPower Gateway could improve in user interface accessibility and ease of configuration to cater to users who prefer simplified setups. Additionally, enhancing cloud integration capabilities would be beneficial. For API Connect, improving the initial cost-effectiveness and streamlining advanced customization options to reduce complexity could make it more accessible to smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM API Connect boasts flexible deployment options with extensive cloud support, facilitating quick setups and responsive service. DataPower Gateway, though often more challenging to configure, is offset by a dedicated support team that ensures robust deployment within security-focused infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway often requires a lower initial setup cost, providing solid ROI through its integration capabilities. Despite a higher initial expense, IBM API Connect's advanced tools often justify the cost, delivering superior long-term ROI by enhancing productivity across the board.

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect 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

IBM API Connect

Ranking in API Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (9th)

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 IBM API Connect is 6.3%, up from 6.3% 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

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan

Solutions Architect at Synechron

Offers basic API orchestration and provides robust security and governance features

While Azure API Management offers configurable scalability, IBM API Connect relies on Kubernetes clusters. This might seem manual and require defining cluster instances upfront, but it's completely customizable and not on-the-fly scaling. It's completely custom-driven, not on-the-fly scaling, which some may consider cumbersome. Overall, I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Almost all applications we've been exposing lately go through this middleware, so it's used extensively. There are around sixty applications directly using it, but six Kubernetes clusters serve those applications. It's heavily used for integration, including system-to-system integration and product integrations. Our usage has been increasing year-on-year based on our needs.

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.

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

"API Connect's most valuable feature is its ability to act as a gateway. It's very easy to configure security and everything else in it. You don't have to kill yourself implementing custom configurations."

"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it protects our backend system. We are exposing services to external parties and using this solution to protect the backend system, and to have a navigation in between."

"One of the most valuable features is that we can seamlessly and harmoniously expose our capabilities, from a security point of view."

"This product is well integrated with other products. Its ability to interact with IBM Secure Gateway and other integration products is the core feature. Also, the lead time to put it into production is relatively short ."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"It has all of the tools that are needed for the specific mission."

"API Connect is a good product, and everything works fine. All the analytics are good, and it is easy to follow up. I like it in that sense. I'm more focused on following up on analytics by seeing how many API calls we are getting and where we see a lot of problems. I was working on that API level."

"It allows enterprises to expose some of their tech to outside stakeholders."

More IBM API Connect pros

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

"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."

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

"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."

"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."

"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

Cons

"Components, like caching, should be implemented as policies, not requiring dependency on an external solution."

"In terms of what needs improvement, some of the product documentation could be better."

"Possible improvement is mainly around having more of the cloud oriented architecture bringing stability in adding new capabilities around security."

"They seem to have left out a feature for microservices and also a certification module for OIDC."

"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."

"Business applications could be exposed to users."

"The documentation needs to be a bit better."

"When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ."

More IBM API Connect cons

"It is a costly product."

"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."

"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."

"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."

"They should add features to manage API integrations."

"I would like the tool to improve its training."

"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive when compared to other products in this class. There were no extra fees for add-ons or technical support."

"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."

"API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution."

"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."

"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."

"The pricing is too expensive with IBM. Sometimes, we prefer to go with an open source or something more lightweight."

"There was a need to purchase an upfront license or a one-time license or upfront license, but I cannot remember the details about it clearly."

"It is a pretty expensive tool."

More IBM API Connect pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."

"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."

"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 total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."

"The product is expensive."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Educational Organization

12%

Insurance Company

12%

Computer Software Company

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 IBM API Connect?

Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?

Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments. I don't deal with licensing, but compared to other IBM products, the licensing is not significantly higher.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?

When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ ( /categories/message-queue-mq...

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 IBM API Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM API Connect

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 7% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM API Connect Competitors

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect

June 2025

Download IBM API Connect 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

IBM API Connect facilitates API management and integration in the financial sector. Companies use it to expose, secure, and manage APIs for banking, insurance, and fintech, deploying it on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution.

IBM API Connect focuses on creating and monetizing APIs while enabling seamless transactions and integration with third-party services. It is vital for compliance with regulations and enhances external communication among institutions. With deployment options suitable for different environments, it supports centralized gateway management, robust security features, and comprehensive API lifecycle management. Users benefit from powerful analytics, user-friendly interfaces, and high performance with capabilities in message transformation and efficient monitoring.

What are the most important features?

Centralized Gateway: Manages all APIs through a single entry point.
Robust Security: Ensures API protection with advanced security measures.
Comprehensive API Lifecycle Management: Covers creation, deployment, and retirement of APIs.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies API creation and management tasks.
Powerful Analytics: Provides insights into API usage and performance.
Seamless Integration: Connects easily with third-party services and internal systems.
Flexible Deployment Options: Supports on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
High Performance: Optimizes API performance and reduces latency.
Message Transformation: Manipulates and formats messages between different systems.
Visualization Tools: Enables clear and detailed views of API usage statistics.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

API Monetization: Generates additional revenue streams from APIs.
Enhanced Compliance: Ensures adherence to industry regulations and standards.
Improved External Communication: Facilitates integration and communication among financial institutions.
Technical Support: Benefit from reliable customer support and easy configuration.
Deployment Flexibility: Choose from on-premises, cloud, or hybrid options.

IBM API Connect is extensively implemented in the financial sector, enabling banking, insurance, and fintech services to manage APIs efficiently. Companies use it to ensure secure transactions, integration with third-party services, and compliance with regulatory standards. Its deployment flexibility accommodates different infrastructure needs, making it suitable for a wide range of financial applications.

IBM

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

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

RBL Bank, Availity

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

June 2025

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