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Microsoft Azure API Management vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager
September 2023
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 18, 2022

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure API Management and WSO2 API Manager based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both solutions tell us installation and deployment is simple and straightforward.
  • Features: Microsoft Azure API Management users relate that the solution is easy to configure, simple to use, and very flexible. Users like that the solution provides an intuitive self-enablement process that allows clients and users the ability to easily register themselves. Users would like to see better documentation and better third-party integration.

    WSO2 API Manager users tell us the solution is very fast, easy to configure, and offers excellent integrations. The robust features of security and throttling result in significant successful development efforts and time savings. Many users feel that the solution is a bit outdated and is missing some basic functionalities.
  • Pricing: Microsoft Azure API Management users find that licensing fees can get very expensive and should be monitored closely. WSO2 API Manager has an open-source option and also some very competitively priced licensing options.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions are satisfied with the service and support.

Comparison Results: Many users are heavily invested in Microsoft Azure products, making Microsoft Azure API Management more widely used and trusted. Additionally, WSO2 API lacks some new features and updated functionalities that other API solutions commonly provide. In terms of pricing, however, users are happier with WSO2.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager Report (Updated: September 2023).
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744,865 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Hocine Zaidi
Smooth running solution with great Active Directory integration and wireless backup
We had all our Saas applications on the cloud, so it's easier to centralize everything in Azure, including configuration and maintenance. There's... Read more →
Viraj Dhanushka
It's a low-code platform that enables you to get things done easily
WSO2 is accessible. Even a beginner can have an idea of what's going on. It has a drag-and-drop graphical interface, so it's a low-code platform... Read more →
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The Application Gateway we have found to be the most useful in Microsoft Azure API Management. We have integrated the Microsoft Azure API Management with Application Gateway. Application Gateway is a type of load balancer that we are using for the high availability of our API calls.""Easy to integrate API management platform. It is a stable and scalable solution.""Microsoft Azure API Management is 90 to 99 percent scalable. We have three instances running in parallel.""The ability to easily connect back to Service Fabric is the most important for us.""We're very satisfied with Azure API Management. We've had no issues with bugs, everything runs smoothly, and the connection between the cloud and the on-premise infrastructure was good.""We use this solution for API rate limiting and for its security features against DDoS.""The most valuable features are the API and integrations.""The stability and performance are good. It is easy to install, and it scales well too."

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"The user interface is easy to navigate, and the documentation is extensive. It's open-source, so everything is available, and we can create what we need. That's not necessarily a feature, but it's an advantage.""The solution is open source and easy to configure.""It's a good product.""Based on the information I have, the solution's most valuable feature is its capability of implementing custom solutions.""WSO2 API Manager is a stable solution.""The product is easy to use.""The scalability is fine for our purposes.""The solution is stable."

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Cons
"Some of the DevOps stuff could be easier to work with. The migration paths are a little complicated, and moving code around could be more seamless. There should be less manual migration when several teams work together to publish code to the DevOps.""I would like to see more security features become available.""The licensing tiers can be misleading.""When you start with Azure API management, you also need to onboard the Azure console and the Azure cloud environment, which comes with a price.""Microsoft Azure API Management is lagging behind Apigee and should also have a better CICD process.""Specific to API development, I think Microsoft is still far behind AWS. AWS has grown by leaps and bounds, and Microsoft is a close second. But in terms of features and other stuff they provide, Microsoft's compatibility with publicly available APIs is a little limited. So, that is a little bit of a constraint. But what they provide is good, it's just that they need to build more on their API suite. I think Google is doing a really good job at that.""I rate the technical support from Microsoft Azure API Management a four out of five.""Microsoft Azure API Management needs to improve stability."

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"The price and the complexities attached to the solution are two areas of concern where improvements are required.""The initial setup can be difficult.""The professional support and licensing aspects of WSO have been a challenge.""They are developing another platform called Choreo that allows you to create API itself using the WSO2 programming language Ballerina. It would be great if they added a direct connection between Choreo and API Manager, that would be great. I think they are working on that, but I'm not sure.""The user interface could be a bit better.""I would improve the product documentation. There are some gaps, and it can be difficult to find the proper documentation for the product if you need to solve something.""We had some problems with the reverse proxy not being able to invoke fully qualified domain names, so we have to build some custom scripts to solve this issue.""Lacks some new features and updated functionalities."

More WSO2 API Manager Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Since everyone is isocentric here, it is reasonable for me."
  • "We pay for a yearly license."
  • "Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
  • "Azure's pricing is very competitive compared to platforms like Apigee and MuleSoft."
  • "Azure is a pay-as-you-go model. You build out your virtual environment and pay a monthly price depending on CPU cores, storage, etc."
  • "There are no additional costs above the main license."
  • "It's pay as you go. The subscription packages have room for different scales. It's calculated by the number of apps or computers you use. You do not have to use the enterprise subscription. These subscriptions have different pricing, so you can find one to meet your needs for scalability."
  • "Because of our partner relationship, our pricing is pretty decent. But in general, if I compare pricing, I think the initial offer that we got from Microsoft until the relationship kicked in was more expensive than AWS. There were some unexpected expenses because we had to pause. This was due to our inexperience and because we were doing this significant public cloud migration for the first time. We were using SAP on a public cloud for the first time."

    • More Microsoft Azure API Management Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "WSO2 API Manager is a low-cost solution. It is one of the most affordable solutions."
  • "We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."
  • "It is costly, around ten thousand per year, per instance"
  • "The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."
  • "For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."
  • "WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."
  • "WSO2 API Manager is quite an expensive tool. I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."
  • "I am using the free version."

    • More WSO2 API Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    How does Apigee differ from Azure API Management?
    Top Answer: Apigee offers both cloud-based and on-prem options while Microsoft Azure API Management currently only offers a cloud-based solution. Both solutions are easy to use. Apigee allows for the ability… more »
    Which is better - Azure API Management or Amazon API Gateway?
    Top Answer:If you use Azure products, API Management is a great solution. It solves many of the problems of externalizing web services. For example, when you need versioning, establish a developer portal and… more »
    What do you like most about Microsoft Azure API Management?
    Top Answer:The tool's most valuable feature is the integration of CI/CD with the API gateway.
    Read all 43 answers   →
    What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?
    Top Answer:WSO2 API Manager has a user-friendly model.
    Read all 26 answers   →
    What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
    Top Answer:WSO2 API Manager should improve its marketplace subscription model and documentation in order to reach a higher level in the market.
    Read all 27 answers   →
    What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
    Top Answer:We use the solution mainly to protect the frontend and backend proxy APIs. We also use the solution for federating with the identity server. We publish our backend API into WSO2 API Manager and use… more »
    Read all 22 answers   →
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 62 in API Management
    Views
    39,344
    Comparisons
    32,368
    Reviews
    39
    Average Words per Review
    439
    Rating
    7.9
    8th
    out of 62 in API Management
    Views
    10,770
    Comparisons
    7,179
    Reviews
    15
    Average Words per Review
    358
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure API Management, MS Azure API Management
    Learn More
    Microsoft
    WSO2
    Overview

    Microsoft Azure API Management is a reliable and scalable way to publish, consume, and manage APIs running on an Microsoft Azure platform. Azure API Management provides all essential tools required for end-to-end management of APIs. It ensures optimal performance of the APIs by tracking and enforcing usage and authentication.

    Microsoft Azure API Management is primarily used to provide a central interface to create, provision, and manage APIs for web and cloud applications and services. Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. With Microsoft Azure API Management, businesses can streamline their work across hybrid and multi cloud environments with a unified place to manage all their APIs.


    Microsoft Azure API Management Features


    Microsoft Azure API Management has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Manage APIs across clouds and on premises: Optimize API traffic flow by deploying API gateways side by side with the APIs hosted in Azure, other clouds, and on premises. Meet security and compliance requirements with a unified management experience and full visibility across all APIs.
    • Customized usage limits: By applying authentication, authorization, and usage limits, you can protect your resources by controlling how data and services are exposed to employees, partners, and customers.
    • API-first approaches: Accelerate your business by building apps faster and delivering immediate value to customers through API-first approaches. This helps you decouple front- and back-end teams through API mocking, API revisions and versioning, and automated API documentation.
    • Customizable developer portal: Improve API discoverability by creating a customizable developer portal for all your APIs. This enables you to simply manage and share APIs with internal teams, external partners, and customers.
    • Facades for back-end services: Transform your existing services and automatically turn legacy web services into modern REST-based APIs using facades.
    • Security for your API’s: Keep all your APIs behind a single static IP or domain, and help protect them with tokens, keys, and IP filtering.

    Microsoft Azure API Management Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Microsoft Azure API Management. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Monitor the health of APIs, configure throttling, identify errors, and rate limits.
    • Enforce flexible and fine-grained quotas and rate limits. Modify the shape and behavior of your APIs using policies. Improve latency and scale your APIs with response caching.
    • Connect on-premises APIs to cloud services by creating a façade that lets you safely integrate.
    • Create and manage user roles and define end-to-end API usage policies.
    • Consolidate and manage thousands of APIs across multiple platforms in a central interface.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Microsoft Azure API Management stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its DevOps integration, its easy setup, and its dynamic pricing. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Cecil S., a Software Engineer, writes of the solution, “The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure API Management is the developer portal because it's very quick and easy to get something published."

    Dmitri E., an Integration Architect at MiBanco, notes, “In particular, in API Management, used as front-end APIs, it's easy to manage. We use Microsoft due to the stability of the company. It is easy to set up. The solution is scalable. It is stable as a product as well.”

    WSO2 API Manager is a comprehensive platform that allows organizations to design, publish, and manage APIs. 

    It provides a centralized interface for API governance, security, and analytics. 

    With features like API monetization and developer portal, it enables businesses to drive innovation and create new revenue streams.

    Offer
    Learn more about Microsoft Azure API Management
    Learn More
    Learn more about WSO2 API Manager
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    Sample Customers
    adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH, Opensistemas
    1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Insurance Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm27%
    Computer Software Company18%
    Educational Organization18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager
    September 2023
    Free Report: Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
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    744,865 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft Azure API Management is ranked 1st in API Management with 39 reviews while WSO2 API Manager is ranked 8th in API Management with 15 reviews. Microsoft Azure API Management is rated 8.0, while WSO2 API Manager is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft Azure API Management writes "Easy to set up with good access control but support could be better". On the other hand, the top reviewer of WSO2 API Manager writes " A tool that serves as a gateway to support and monitor an organization's services that need to make upgrades easier". Microsoft Azure API Management is most compared with Amazon API Gateway, Apigee, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Kong Enterprise and SwaggerHub, whereas WSO2 API Manager is most compared with Apigee, Kong Enterprise, Amazon API Gateway, 3scale API Management and IBM API Connect. See our Microsoft Azure API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager report.

    See our list of best API Management vendors.

    We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.