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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
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 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 5.4%, down from 8.5% 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

"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."
"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."
"I like the API automation."
"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."
"The product is stable."
"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."
"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."
"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."
"Both the cloud and on-premises options are available. Customers can leverage the MuleSoft Cloud platform to deploy the applications or set up their own online infrastructure to deploy applications."
"The most valuable feature of MuleSoft API Manager is Exchange, where we store all the API specifications and build the documentation for each API."
"We're using MuleSoft API Manager to integrate with an endpoint in our backend system to import much information into Salesforce. Other tools didn't allow for as many API calls, so we used it to create a new endpoint."
"The security features are good. It's easy to configure the end-to-end integration with existing applications."
"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."
"We can use both on-premises and cloud setups."
"Whenever there was an issue, the support was excellent."
 

Cons

"The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure."
"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."
"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."
"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."
"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."
"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."
"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."
"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."
"They should provide training and development programs to enable the skills and capabilities of users."
"Anypoint could be improved by making it more open and configurable for small companies, who tend not to consider the solution as it's expensive and requires a lot of costs upfront."
"I would like to see MuleSoft expand the range of APIs you can manage with it beyond HTTP, GIPC, and others."
"The solution is expensive."
"The roadmap could include more GenAI use cases integrated into the platform, focusing on various industry verticals."
"The dashboards in Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager could improve."
"An area for improvement in MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is the process of applying policies because it's manual. It would be great if MuleSoft could make the process easier, particularly by automating it."
"Monetization and cataloging can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."
"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 cost was around $45,000 per year."
"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."
"It is really expensive from a Zimbabwean perspective."
"It is extremely high, and I would rate it one out of ten."
"The product is highly priced compared to other advanced software. It is affordable only for tier-one customers."
"The licensing model is based on how many cores are used. It is a very simple licensing scheme."
"The pricing is very expensive, although you get a lot of power from the product."
"I think that it is pretty expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing is quite reasonable and affordable."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.