Istio vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

Isito and VMware are both solutions in the Service Mesh category. Isito is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.5. Isito holds a 20.5% mindshare in SM, compared to VMware’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Isito users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Istio

Read 11 Istio reviews

1,949 Views
1,949 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 22 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

7,803 Views
390 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Istio

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Istio and VMware Tanzu Platform are leading solutions in the cloud-native application space. VMware Tanzu Platform's extensive features and comprehensive ecosystem make it a superior product, with users believing it is worth the higher cost.

Features: Istio offers robust service mesh capabilities, powerful traffic management, and is valuable for microservices architectures. VMware Tanzu Platform is praised for its extensive integration capabilities, advanced Kubernetes management features, and offers broader and more integrated features compared to Istio.

Room for Improvement: Istio users noted a need for improvements in documentation, and operational simplicity. VMware Tanzu Platform users mentioned the complexity of the initial setup and a steep learning curve. Istio users find its documentation issues less critical compared to the complexity of VMware Tanzu Platform.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Istio is commended for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. VMware Tanzu Platform users report a more challenging deployment process but receive strong customer support once the system is running. Istio offers a smoother initial deployment whereas VMware Tanzu Platform provides better post-deployment support.

Pricing and ROI: Istio is considered cost-effective with a good return on investment according to user reviews. VMware Tanzu Platform, although higher in cost, delivers substantial long-term benefits and ROI through its comprehensive feature set. Istio wins on affordability, but VMware Tanzu Platform justifies its higher price with enhanced capabilities and better ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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

Istio

Ranking in Service Mesh

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Service Mesh

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (13th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Istio is 20.5%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 2.8%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Service Mesh

Featured Reviews

JETTI DINESH REDDY

Infra , DevSecOps & Automation Architect at Zuellig Pharma

Enhanced microservice security and advanced traffic management and good authentification

When our developers are building the microservices, instead of imposing additional burdens or additional thinking on them, especially as part of network features such as traffic management, security, or observability, we deploy something from the infrastructure side, so developers need only focus…

Read full review

DarshanChaudhari

Solutions Architect Hybrid Cloud Practice US/Europe at Tech Mahindra Limited

Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling

I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

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

"The security feature with mutual TLS authentication, which is identity-based, and the traffic management using cloud load balancers are very valuable."

"We can implement load balancing to distribute traffic across multiple service instances. Istio also offers traffic routing capabilities and circuit-breaking functionality. For security, it handles authentication using mutual TLS (mTLS) between services. It can authorize services using JWT tokens. Istio also allows defining policies for rate limiting to control traffic within services."

"The tool's mutual TLS stands out. It provides secure communication between services within the cluster. Additionally, Istio offers built-in telemetry and tracing with tools like Jaeger, which aids monitoring and troubleshooting."

"Istio's best feature is that it's easy to use."

"Istio can save you time in terms of network troubleshooting."

"Istio provides tremendous value, particularly in offering TLS and authentication over microservice-to-microservice communication."

"The most valuable features of Istio are the traffic management and the Sidecar they inject, which greatly helps secure the application."

"What I find particularly valuable about Istio is that it is free of cost."

More Istio pros

"We feel very good about these features."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"Handling large-scale environments with proxies can strain resources, but horizontal scaling can improve fault tolerance."

"Reducing the latency between the control plane and the data plane would be beneficial."

"If you're a beginner in infrastructure management and networking, learning Istio might pose some challenges. However, if you have some knowledge of networking or service meshes, you should find it manageable. Istio's website offers documentation to guide you through learning."

"Istio needs to be more mature and user-friendly."

"It would be beneficial if Istio offered paid support options, similar to AWS's enterprise support, to quickly resolve issues that might affect production."

"If someone doesn't understand Kubernetes, they'll have issues working with Istio."

"I've seen applications where they had such strict time constraints, they couldn't use Istio because it was too much overhead."

"For our use case that we applied it to, there were graph queues and the calls that were coming in. There were the things that we couldn't apply at the time, but it kind of worked."

More Istio cons

"The network control and security policies must be improved."

"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."

"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."

"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."

"Another area of improvement is pricing."

"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."

"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."

"The infrastructure is quite challenging."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can deploy Istio free of cost and don't need to pay for it."

"It is on the less expensive side. It provides a significant saving for us in terms of cost and other things. It is open-source. We just download it from the open-source framework and use it."

"We use the tool's open-source version, so there are no hidden fees or additional costs associated with it."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."

"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Istio?

Istio provides a significant saving for us in terms of costs since it is open source. However, Istio can still come at a price. It has a steep learning curve and might require more manpower hours ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Istio?

We use Istio for Service Discovery and routing traffic.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Istio?

I do not see much room for improvement in Istio for my project as it currently fits my needs perfectly. It would be beneficial if Istio offered paid support options, similar to AWS's enterprise sup...

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Kong Mesh vs Istio

Compared 39% of the time

HAProxy vs Istio

Compared 34% of the time

NGINX Service-Mesh vs Istio

Compared 5% of the time

Traefik Enterprise vs Istio

Compared 5% of the time

HashiCorp Consul vs Istio

Compared 4% of the time

More Istio Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 16% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Portainer vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Istio

July 2025

Download Istio product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

July 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

Overview

Connect
Intelligently control the flow of traffic and API calls between services, conduct a range of tests, and upgrade gradually with red/black deployments.

Secure
Automatically secure your services through managed authentication, authorization, and encryption of communication between services.

Control
Apply policies and ensure that they’re enforced, and that resources are fairly distributed among consumers.

Observe
See what's happening with rich automatic tracing, monitoring, and logging of all your services.

Isito

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

VMware

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

July 2025

Free Report: Istio vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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