3scale API Management vs Layer7 API Management comparison

Red Hat and Broadcom are both solutions in the API Management category. Red Hat is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while Broadcom is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.6. Red Hat holds a 2.2% mindshare in APIM, compared to Broadcom’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

3scale API Management

Read 11 3scale API Management reviews

3,388 Views
2,493 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Layer7 API Management

Read 111 Layer7 API Management reviews

4,687 Views
3,479 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

Layer7 API Management

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Layer7 API Management and 3scale API Management compete in the API management category. Layer7 appears to have a stronger focus on security features, while 3scale offers better integration and deployment with OpenShift.

Features: Layer7 API Management focuses on security and protocol translation, offering robust REST-to-SOAP conversion capabilities, OAuth integration, and built-in identity management. Its strengths also lie in routing and monitoring. 3scale API Management provides lightweight, containerized deployment and strong integration with OpenShift. It includes comprehensive API management and automation capabilities, making deployment straightforward.

Room for Improvement: Layer7 API Management could enhance its developer portal usability and documentation, as it faces criticism for additional token support costs, limited customization, an outdated UI, and lack of intuitive tools. 3scale API Management needs improvements in rate limiting, flexibility, and customization options, particularly regarding its developer experience and portal interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Layer7 API Management offers diverse deployment options including on-premises, hybrid, and public cloud, but often requires significant support for upgrades and customization, resulting in mixed customer service reviews. 3scale API Management, with its cloud-native design, integrates well with OpenShift for easy deployment across environments, though there are occasional concerns about accessibility and support efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: Layer7 API Management is generally priced higher than competitors, warranting negotiation for cost-effectiveness. While its features justify the cost for larger organizations, it might not fit smaller businesses, though long-term value and ROI can be achieved. 3scale API Management offers a more affordable solution, often bundled with OpenShift, and presents a budget-friendly alternative for organizations seeking comprehensive API management.

To learn more, read our detailed 3scale API Management vs. Layer7 API Management Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. Layer7 API Management

February 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

3scale API Management

Ranking in API Management

17th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Layer7 API Management

Ranking in API Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

111

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Layer7 API Management is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan

Associate Manager at Baariz

Lightweight solution but less flexible customization features

It lacks some features, and the product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it. One disadvantage is that for customization, it uses liquid templates. However, not everyone is familiar with liquid templates, so if you want to do some customized logging or other tasks, you may need to struggle a lot. Other solutions like IBM API Connect or Apigee use JavaScript, which is more developer-friendly. That's what I found.

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Ronald D'Souza

Presales Consultant for CA Southern Africa at Hyperion Holding Pty Ltd

Has great drag-and-drop features and it requires minimal coding

I have mainly implemented using Layer 7 API Management. Some of the major challenges we were able to meet with a quick release to market methodology. Some of the tasks which we achieved for our customers were: 1. Translation service from SOAP to REST and vice versa. 2. API service to DB (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, Snowflake, SAP HANA) -- Created Swagger APIs that were able to perform CRUD operation to the backend API mentioned above and provided routes to query and get data. 3. Integration with Payment gateway service providers to perform (transaction on behalf of the customer with third-party payment gateway service providers white labeled with our APIs ) -- Followed TMF standards for payment gateway integration with the Telcom world. 4. Orchestration of the API. Build multiple microservers and provided orchestration based on route, path, and data in the request and perform actions that would be communicated with multiple APIs and provide a single consolidated response. 5. Provided API-driven security (Oauth 2.0, JWT, SAML, Basic, and a variety of means) to access the API giving the developer the freedom to concentrate only on application/service/microservice and let the gateway handle the threat. 6. Seamless Mutual Authentication allowed good segregation between APIs in the DMZ and internal network.

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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

"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."

"To me, the most valuable feature of 3scale API Management is that it lets you add a backend to the product. I also like that you can integrate it well with OpenShift clusters, making 3scale API Management a useful solution."

"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."

"I like the API automation."

"The gateway is the most valuable feature because it makes it possible for us to gather all traffic into one proxy, which is a good thing."

"The product is stable."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."

"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."

More 3scale API Management pros

"We can create multiple orgs and set up policies and management. We can also integrate with an APM solution"

"It's pretty easy to use, and once we have templating set up we can add new APIs, at least through the gateway, and apply the security to them; it takes a minute."

"This product, at first blush, looks something like it's one of those weekend warrior tools, but it's not. It's an enterprise-class tool with the kind of usability that you wouldn't expect. And with that usability - how do you have your cake and eat it too? Well, it's because of the product's extensibility. It's very well-integrated with your existing Java library of processes and procedures, as well as your ability to write new extensions to it. You get so much of the base functionality but you don't give up the ability customize."

"Security is the most important parameter of the solution, for me, because whenever you are exposing your APIs to third-parties, it is critical that the data remains anonymous and that data is retained within the system, that it is not leaked. CA API Management provides good security features."

"Mobile app capabilities is good for building mobile apps to consume developed APIs. Also, the API Portal capabilities are very nice, up to and including the ability to do monetization. Security features are exhaustive, with several adapters to all leading identity suites."

"It is flexible in how it creates custom policies and uses builds with impressive methods."

"Key features include: lightweight mediation, transformation from JSON to XML and XML to JSON, API portal and API key management, the Developer Portal, and Circuit Breaker is a cool feature, too."

"Compared to other vendors, this product is much faster in coming up with new features, which is good."

More Layer7 API Management pros

Cons

"What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported."

"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."

"I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with."

"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."

"What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful."

"We tried to use the portal, but we decided that it wasn't enough. The content management system (CMS) is not easy to use if you want to customize things, and it's hard to get someone who has the knowledge to work with the CMS."

"The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure."

"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."

"The product's initial setup phase is not very straightforward, making it an area where improvements are required."

"As a SaaS product, control over some configuration elements and environments is lost."

"The Policy Manager tool that is used to manage the solution is very heavy to use because it is based in Java. Sometimes it takes a long time to load. There could be some improvements to it. If they could make Policy Manager on a web page that would be a good alternative."

"They need a multifactor authentication solution for the API layer and the other layers, as well."

"The implementation of CA API Management was complex. It is a complicated solution. You have to know so much IT knowledge to do the implementation."

"There is room for improvement in terms of innovation and investment, especially when compared to other leading products in the market."

"We have experienced technical difficulties with the product in the past."

"Broadcom's technical support team needs improvement."

More Layer7 API Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."

"3scale API Management has reasonable pricing, judging from its competitor, Kong. My organization pays yearly for the 3scale API Management license, though I'm unable to give the exact figure because every single day there are new clusters deployed. I'm in charge of three to four clusters in my team, but give or take, it costs a few thousand lakhs."

"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."

"The cost was around $45,000 per year."

"We weren't comfortable with the pricing of licensing. It was slightly more expensive than its competitors."

"It was very high at that time. We are a Broadcom CA partner, and we got it only for testing purposes. We didn't pay anything for it."

"At the time we bought the product it was a perpetual users license and there has been no need for additional licensing fees."

"CA has great pricing for gateways, so negotiate with your sales team."

"Keep in mind the non-product licensing, e.g., if you opt not to use the embedded SQL."

"For what we are after, the pricing is okay. It is competitive."

"This solution is a bit more expensive than competitors."

"I think it's competitive. It's not that expensive when you compare CA with the Oracle product."

More Layer7 API Management pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about 3scale API Management?

The product is stable.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3scale API Management?

I rate the product’s pricing as two out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?

The deployment process could be easier.

See all answers

What do you like most about Layer7 API Management?

The solution's technical support is good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Layer7 API Management?

The pricing is expensive compared to other products.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Layer7 API Management?

Layer7 API Management could be improved in its logging and alert mechanisms. Furthermore, although cloud deployment has been introduced, I am not familiar with all recent updates. In previous versi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

Compared 16% of the time

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Compared 13% of the time

IBM DataPower Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Compared 2% of the time

More 3scale API Management Competitors

Apigee vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 32% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Layer7 API Management

Compared 12% of the time

More Layer7 API Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Layer7 API Management

February 2025

Download Layer7 API Management product report

Also Known As

No data available

CA API Management, CA Live API Creator, Espresso Logic, CA API Gateway

Overview

3scale is an API management platform that delivers flexible, highly scalable solutions to package, distribute, control, and monetize your APIs, giving you the power to make the most of your API program.

Share company data, content, or services through Web or mobile applications.
Provide an API to external organizations, internal teams, or both.
Avoid the hassle and constant maintenance of building a solution from scratch.

3scale delivers centralized API management features through a distributed, cloud-hosted layer. The platform includes built-in features to help you build a more successful API program, including access control, rate limits, payment gateway integration, and developer experience tools.

Red Hat

Layer7 API Management is a comprehensive solution that enables organizations to securely expose, manage, and monetize their APIs.

It provides features such as API gateway, developer portal, analytics, and security to ensure seamless integration and control over API traffic.

With Layer7 API Management, businesses can streamline their API operations and drive innovation.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform

1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Oracle 4. Salesforce 5. SAP 6. Cisco 7. Dell 8. HP 9. Adobe 10. VMware 11. Accenture 12. Capgemini 13. Deloitte 14. PwC 15. Ernst & Young 16. Infosys 17. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) 18. Wipro 19. Cognizant 20. HCL Technologies 21. Tech Mahindra 22. Fujitsu 23. Hitachi 24. NEC 25. NTT Data 26. Ericsson 27. Nokia 28. Siemens 29. AT&T 30. Verizon 31. Vodafone 32. Orange

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. Layer7 API Management

February 2025

Free Report: 3scale API Management vs. Layer7 API Management

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