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3scale API Management 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

3scale API Management
Ranking in API Management
17th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MuleSoft API Manager
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft API Manager is 5.1%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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 product is stable."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."
"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."
"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."
"I like the API automation."
"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."
"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."
"It can create high-cost solutions, allowing for a great deal of customization to make it well-suited for specific needs."
"I found the authentication features very valuable, like how the tool provides client IDs and secrets and lets you apply authentication policies. We bought the Titanium package with analytics, which allowed us to do rate limiting and throttling. The API monitoring and alerting were also useful."
"The entire offering and suite of tools that this solution provides have been very valuable. We are able to manage APIs on runtime on a cloud basis which has been very useful."
"When using the Mulesoft Anypoint Platform, it has a wide range of connectors that are readily available to connect with the multiple applications."
"The documentation is great; it is always up to date and well-presented."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to investigate APIs."
"The security features are good. It's easy to configure the end-to-end integration with existing applications."
"The most valuable features are API development and API management."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."
"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."
"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."
"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 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."
"From an API management perspective, MuleSoft's API Manager is not as powerful as some other tools available."
"In the next release, Mulesoft should make it easier for people who don't have the native connectors to build their own rather than using the APA from the power platform or outlet."
"The setup process could be simpler."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"The API gateway and API runtime are too heavy, which means that it is not suitable for microservices."
"The solution's price is high."
"Rather than focusing on numbers, they should focus more on the customer support service."
"The cost model could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."
"The cost was around $45,000 per year."
"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."
"The licensing fees are approximately $80,000 USD per year and there are costs for additional functionality, as well as premiums for connectors to systems such as Oracle and SAP."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as six and a half to seven."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"It's not very expensive, reasonably priced. There are no additional costs."
"It is really expensive from a Zimbabwean perspective."
"I want MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager to be cheaper because when you scale up, it becomes very costly. Price-wise, I'd give it a seven out of ten."
"It is extremely high, and I would rate it one out of ten."
"The product's main drawback is its cost. It's expensive for our company, and their recent change in pricing strategy last year complicated things further. That's the only thing we're not happy with."
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Answers from the Community

ZN
Mar 6, 2023
Mar 6, 2023
Apigee for sure. Not only do you get the benefit of hybrid and on-prem deployments. As a gov entity, you will face those challenges. Over time you might want to use AWS/Azure clouds so you can migrate it accordingly or just use the PAYG on GCP with all the security Bells and Whistles. https://www.gartner.com/review...
See 2 answers
Rohit Sircar - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 6, 2023
I will choose MuleSoft due to its ease of use, integration extendibility, and product roadmap. MuleSoft API Management is better because of the following reasons:  * Ease of initial setup & configuration  * Most robust features in API management: oath, throttling, and access levels can be done very easily. * MuleSoft API-led connectivity & Integration solution (you can extend the API management solution with a flexible integration option). You can very easily extend APIM to integration. * Very Clear Product roadmap including APIM, RPA and multi-cloud implementation. The cost of both MuleSoft APIM & APIGEE is similar. Compared to 3scale, Apigee API Management has a better API gateway for security and traffic management. Apigee is better for API policy enablement compared to 3scale API Management. Apigee provides better support for GraphQL, OData, OAS2.  
RS
Mar 6, 2023
Apigee for sure. Not only do you get the benefit of hybrid and on-prem deployments. As a gov entity, you will face those challenges. Over time you might want to use AWS/Azure clouds so you can migrate it accordingly or just use the PAYG on GCP with all the security Bells and Whistles. https://www.gartner.com/review...
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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

No data available
Anypoint API Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform
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 3scale API Management vs. MuleSoft API Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.