No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Cloud Pak for Integration
Ranking in API Management
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (28th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (8th), Application Infrastructure (13th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.0%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway4.0%
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration1.1%
Other94.9%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Khalitov - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Full Stack Software Engineer at Maraphonic, Inc.
Manages APIs and integrates microservices with redirection feature
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Additionally, it supports incremental deployments, allowing you to shift traffic to a new version of an API gradually. For example, you can start by directing 10% of traffic to the new version while the rest continue using the legacy version. If everything works as expected, you can gradually increase the traffic to the new version over time. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has a client base that includes numerous organizations using AI and machine learning technologies. We leverage an open-source machine learning framework and integrate it with Kafka to help create and manage various products and data retrieval processes. For companies with private data, the framework first retrieves relevant data from a GitHub database, which is then combined with the final request before being sent to a language model like GPT. This ensures that the language model uses your specific data to generate responses. Kafka plays a key role by streaming real-time data from file systems and databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL. This data is published to Kafka topics, then vectorized and used with artificial intelligence to enhance the overall process. It's like an old-fashioned approach. The best way is to redesign it with products such as Kafka. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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

"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable. That is the most important criteria."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most preferable aspect would be the elimination of the command, which was a significant improvement. In the past, it was a challenge, but now we can proceed smoothly with the implementation of our policies and everything is managed through JCP. It's still among the positive aspects, and it's a valuable feature."
"The most valuable aspect of the Cloud Pak, in general, is the flexibility that you have to use the product."
"In general, the solution works very, very well."
"Redirection is a key feature. It helps in managing multiple microservices by centralizing control and access."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"What I like most is the stability."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"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:"
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"IBM DataPower Gateway has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to implement rate limits on the different API usage, which is the benefit."
 

Cons

"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated. You still have some products that are still not containerized, so you still have to run them on a dedicated VM."
"What needs to be improved is the restriction that they have on the product."
"The pricing can be improved."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"Its queuing and messaging features need improvement."
"Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"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."
"From the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT language. It does not support multiple languages."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"API management launched two years back and we consider it quite unstable because we still face a lot of bugs."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution's pricing model is very flexible."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

CVS Health Corporation
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.