Juniper Mist Edge vs Steelhead comparison

Juniper and Riverbed are both solutions in the WAN Edge category. Juniper is ranked #14 with an average rating of 9.0, while Riverbed is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.4. Juniper holds a 1.9% mindshare in WE, compared to Riverbed’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Juniper users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

Juniper Mist Edge

Read 5 Juniper Mist Edge reviews

496 Views
496 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Steelhead

Read 26 Steelhead reviews

1,037 Views
653 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Juniper Mist Edge

Steelhead

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Steelhead and Juniper Mist Edge are competing in the network optimization and management category. While Steelhead is well-regarded, Juniper Mist Edge stands out due to its advanced features.

Features: Steelhead offers reliable performance, good optimization capabilities, and straightforward management. Juniper Mist Edge provides innovative AI-driven analytics, automation, and cloud-native architecture.

Room for Improvement: Steelhead needs better integration with third-party systems, enhanced security features, and more advanced analytics tools. Juniper Mist Edge requires improvements in administrative tools, reporting capabilities, and customer support responsiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Steelhead is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Juniper Mist Edge is recognized for its seamless, cloud-based deployment but has mixed feedback on customer support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Steelhead offers a lower setup cost and quicker ROI. Juniper Mist Edge, though higher in initial investment, provides significant long-term benefits through advanced features with user reviews indicating its higher cost is justified.

To learn more, read our detailed Juniper Mist Edge vs. Steelhead Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Juniper Mist Edge vs. Steelhead

December 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

Juniper Mist Edge

Ranking in WAN Edge

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Steelhead

Ranking in WAN Edge

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

WAN Optimization (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the WAN Edge category, the mindshare of Juniper Mist Edge is 1.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Steelhead is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

WAN Edge Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Steelhead	1.6%
Juniper Mist Edge	1.9%
Other	96.5%

WAN Edge

Featured Reviews

Chinedu Onwurah

Global Juniper Presales Engineer at Westcon-Comstor

Has simplified infrastructure management through on-site data and control plane termination

The most valuable features of Juniper Mist Edge include the ability to terminate the data plane and the control plane on-site for privacy purposes. For those that don't want the management of their either wireless or wired infrastructure to be done in the cloud, Juniper Mist Edge helps to solve that problem. AI-generated features in Juniper Mist Edge help to optimize network operations as AI is everything. It helps to simplify the management of infrastructure, assists in root cause analysis and identification of issues and resolution of those issues, and aids in what we call premium analytics to analyze what has gone wrong or the events on-site, providing feedback that would help to make some business-critical decisions. Anomaly detection in Juniper Mist Edge is beneficial, as when talking about AI, that's just it. Anomaly detection helps when things are not going the way they were designed or planned to work. Juniper Mist Edge also helps to detect that and assists in resolving the issue.

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Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments

The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Juniper Mist Edge is valuable for its ability to troubleshoot and configure more things compared to Meraki."

"Juniper is a remote and AI-enhanced product."

"AI-generated features in Juniper Mist Edge help to optimize network operations as AI is everything; it helps to simplify the management of infrastructure, assists in root cause analysis and identification of issues and resolution of those issues, and aids in what we call premium analytics to analyze what has gone wrong or the events on-site, providing feedback that would help to make some business-critical decisions."

"Juniper's technical support is highly responsive."

"Juniper Mist Edge provides better support for medium-sized businesses."

"The visibility of the information that's available about APs through their cloud portal and some of the AI features are most valuable."

"The most valuable aspect of Mist Edge lies in its ability to provide comprehensive visibility into all network packets."

"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."

"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."

"The connectivity to speed is the valuable feature."

"One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users."

"Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs; my actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB, and all the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed."

"Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data."

"The most valuable feature of Steelhead is its optimization capabilities."

"There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international LAN."

More Steelhead pros

Cons

"The one area that we're specifically looking into is their outdoor APs. The development of their outdoor APs is lagging as compared to their internal APs."

"The product needs an update, particularly in price, as it deters many customers, including myself, from using it despite its convenience and effectiveness."

"I experience a lot of stability issues, so the rating is eight out of ten."

"Juniper Mist Edge can sometimes have a delay in information updating, which could be improved."

"Juniper Mist Edge can sometimes have a delay in information updating."

"I would like to see improvements in ensuring government compliance for Mist Edge."

"I think there is a need to improve the virtual edition or the virtual platform of Juniper Mist Edge, as I know that it was discontinued."

"The solution needs to have alert notifications."

"One area for improvement is related to monitoring and visibility."

"The application response time of the solution can be improved."

"Oracle DB traffic experiences lag and slowness due to Steelhead, while other applications perform fine."

"If we load a primary firewall, the secondary firewall usually handles all the active connections, but in Riverbed, this isn't the case. We lose all the active connections at the moment of failure."

"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."

"The product should offer more integration capabilities."

"The traffic is passing, but Oracle DB traffic experiences lag and slowness due to Steelhead, while other applications perform fine."

More Steelhead cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe we're getting some good discounts. We're paying less than $500 per AP. I don't know the annual maintenance cost."

"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."

"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Mist Edge?

Regarding cost, Juniper Mist Edge is very competitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Juniper Mist Edge?

I can't think of any weak points that should be improved in Juniper Mist Edge at this moment. At this point, there is nothing that I believe should be improved on, at least for now. However, I thin...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Juniper Mist Edge?

My customers' main use cases for Juniper Mist Edge include those who want to replace their wireless LAN controller with an on-premise wireless LAN controller, which is what Juniper Mist Edge can do...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...

See all answers

What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?

One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?

I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optimization between replication from one data center to another data center. The mai...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

WAN Edge

December 2025

Download Juniper Mist Edge product report

Buyer's Guide

Steelhead

January 2026

Download Steelhead product report

Also Known As

No data available

RIverbed Steelhead

Overview

Juniper Mist Edge extends our microservices architecture to the campus, bringing agility and scale while enabling new applications at the edge. The Juniper Mist Edge uses the Juniper Mist Cloud and its distributed software architecture for scalable and resilient operations, management, troubleshooting, and analytics — all without the need for legacy wireless controllers.

Juniper

Steelhead is the leading network optimization and application performance solution chosen by over 30,000 organizations worldwide. The performance of networks and applications directly impacts business productivity. Riverbed draws from nearly two decades of experience in driving network and application performance over Wide Area Networks with its flagship offering, SteelHead. SteelHead delivers the underlying technology that helps enterprises of all sizes maximize the efficiency and performance of the networks and applications used to run modern business.

SteelHead is proven to dramatically speed up the performance of applications anywhere in the organization while delivering the best end-user experience even under sub optimal network conditions. Reduce bandwidth utilization by up to 95%, deferring costly network bandwidth upgrades. Increase performance by up to 100x for on-premises applications.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

One Energy, UST Global, i3D.net, Hyland

ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes

Buyer's Guide

Juniper Mist Edge vs. Steelhead

December 2025

Free Report: Juniper Mist Edge vs. Steelhead

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