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IBM DataPower Gateway vs MuleSoft API Manager comparison

 

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 DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
MuleSoft API Manager
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft API Manager is 4.7%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Dipanjan_Nandi - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable testing stubs and policy enforcement with room for better security and cost management
From an API management perspective, MuleSoft's API Manager is not as powerful as some other tools available. Features like monetization and advanced security, which are present in Apigee, are missing. I also want the API Manager to be used as a separate product apart from MuleSoft's other integration solutions. Additionally, the licensing cost is high, and many clients are looking to switch due to this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"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."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"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:"
"What I like most is the stability."
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"The most important features are the API management and API development."
"It provides all of the robust platform-enabled features."
"If you adopt the whole platform, you can build composable applications. This will cut your time creating new applications and updating them – once you have everything running – by up to 50%."
"Overall, the platform is pretty good, I cannot say which one specific feature is good. The idea of an API manager is really interesting."
"Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager's most valuable aspect is it has plenty of features."
"The MuleSoft Exchange and the Experience Hub stand out as the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager are the API gateway, rate limiting, and orchestration."
"The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies."
 

Cons

"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"Its support services could be better."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"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."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."
"I'd suggest more control over MQ restarts and greater transparency in traffic management."
"An area for improvement in MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is the process of applying policies because it's manual. It would be great if MuleSoft could make the process easier, particularly by automating it."
"I would like to see more automation. Operations are done manually. It should also automate in the operation."
"The most important thing that should be improved is that it is too heavy."
"The solution should facilitate the creation of custom connectors for use cases where a user would require extra connectors."
"The solution is missing a monetization module."
"The pricing is quite expensive. It should be adjusted to make it more affordable for users."
"I'd like to see improvements in API Exchange. Currently, we can only expose APIs publicly. I want to categorize some APIs and expose them just to internal stakeholders. It would be great if they could log in to a developer portal, see our current APIs, view Swagger or RAML docs, and try request-response payloads."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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 solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The product is expensive."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The pricing is very expensive, although you get a lot of power from the product."
"The product is highly priced compared to other advanced software. It is affordable only for tier-one customers."
"The pricing for this solution is cheaper than GCP and Bluemix."
"I'm unsure about licensing costs because I'm not the person who handles this. But, ballpark, it's probably somewhere around $300,000-$400,000 or something like that."
"The solution looks more expensive on the surface because it builds all the functions into one core component or into an integrated suite of components."
"It is really expensive from a Zimbabwean perspective."
"When it comes to determining price, the pre-sales team interacts with the customer's primary integration team and the price is negotiated based on the specific usage of the system."
"The licensing model is based on how many cores are used. It is a very simple licensing scheme."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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...
How does Kong Enterprise compare with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager was designed with its users in mind. Though it is a reasonably complex piece of software, it is easy to install and upgrade. While there are different things that ...
How does Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy to implement and learn; it provides several options for deployment, (including ...
What do you like most about Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Anypoint API Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Coca-Cola, Splunk, Citrix, UCSF, Vertu, State of Colorado, National Post, TiVo, Deakin, LLS, Oldcastle Precast, ParcelPoint, Justice Systems, Ube, Sumitomo Corporation, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Groupe Initiatives, Camelot, Panviva
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. MuleSoft API Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.