3scale API Management vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

Red Hat and WSO2 are both solutions in the API Management category. Red Hat is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while WSO2 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.7. Red Hat holds a 2.2% mindshare in APIM, compared to WSO2’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of WSO2 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

WSO2 API Manager

Read 40 WSO2 API Manager reviews

6,643 Views
4,719 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

WSO2 API Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

3scale API Management and WSO2 API Manager compete in the API management category. 3scale appears to have an edge with ease of integration and cost-effectiveness, while WSO2 offers strong security and flexibility but requires more user-friendly enhancements.

Features: 3scale API Management is recognized for its seamless integration with OpenShift clusters, ease of deployment in containerized environments, and flexibility in backend integration. WSO2 API Manager stands out with its strong security features, comprehensive API lifecycle management, and ability to extend and customize solutions with its open-source foundation.

Room for Improvement: 3scale faces challenges in customization, particularly with its CMS and Liquid templates, alongside needs for improved route-limiting and RESTful API interoperability. WSO2 struggles with complexity, demanding a more intuitive user interface and improved documentation for complex scenarios, along with a more competitive pricing model.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both 3scale and WSO2 offer flexible deployment options for on-premises and cloud environments. 3scale excels with strong OpenShift support and generally better customer service. WSO2 supports a wide range of environments but is often perceived as more complex, with less satisfactory support than 3scale.

Pricing and ROI: 3scale offers cost-effective pricing, especially when paired with OpenShift, and is more affordable than competitors like IBM and Apigee, making it appealing for smaller clients. WSO2 offers low-cost open-source advantages but faces challenges with enterprise-level pricing, which can be higher, leading to budgeting disruptions despite its open-source model.

To learn more, read our detailed 3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager

March 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

WSO2 API Manager

Ranking in API Management

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

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 WSO2 API Manager is 4.6%, up from 4.0% 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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VishalSingh14

IT Engineer at Reliance Industries Ltd

Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration

I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

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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."

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

"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."

"The standard deployment is very simple."

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

More 3scale API Management pros

"I think the best part about WSO2 API Manager is that it's highly customizable because it's open-source. The partnership model is quite lucrative for us, it helps us to go and pitch to our customers. You can build a lot of business models yourself that you want to use. You are able to do a lot of the solutions."

"This is a flexible and versatile API management solution that has the power to integrate with more than just API."

"The solution is open source and easy to configure."

"Most of the time, we need to install a plug-in without having any lapse in services or restarting the application. The WSO2 platform can do all deployments without any downtime."

"As far as I am aware this solution is the first API Publisher that allows you to create and publish API and to manage the API lifecycle."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution is open-source."

"Based on the information I have, the solution's most valuable feature is its capability of implementing custom solutions."

More WSO2 API Manager pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"WSO2 API Manager can be improved a lot relating to usability"

"The professional support and licensing aspects of WSO have been a challenge."

"The price and the complexities attached to the solution are two areas of concern where improvements are required."

"The product hasn’t been updated for some time."

"Based on our recent large scaling project, the latency needs to be improved."

"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."

"The tool's commercial aspect could be improved. Pricing varies with partners, so selecting the appropriate pricing can be challenging."

"The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved."

More WSO2 API Manager 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."

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

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

"My previous company paid about 1.2 million dollars, and my current company pays about 300k. Both companies are at the enterprise level."

"We have not opted for the paid version of WSO2 but we have implemented the free and open source WSO2 software to a great extent and it is working as per our expectation."

"I think the other competitors that are providing the same solution are quite expensive. WSO2 API Manager is quite cheap."

"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."

"The challenge is the increasing pricing, which has led some customers to consider alternatives, like using Spring Boot solutions instead. The rising costs, especially as cores and usage increase, have been a concern, prompting some to migrate to other products."

"It is an open-source product."

"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."

"The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."

More WSO2 API Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing 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.

See all answers

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.

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What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?

The deployment process could be easier.

See all answers

What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?

It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?

One area for improvement is monitoring. Dashboards for application monitoring of the APIs would be beneficial, allowing us to check for faulty APIs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?

We use WSO2 API Manager for our microservices and our APIs, both internally and externally.

See all answers

Comparisons

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

Compared 16% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

Compared 16% of the time

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs 3scale API Management

Compared 8% of the time

More 3scale API Management Competitors

Apigee vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 24% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 16% of the time

Apache APISIX vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 13% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More WSO2 API Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

March 2025

Download 3scale API Management product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 API Manager

March 2025

Download WSO2 API Manager product report

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

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.

WSO2

Sample Customers

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

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

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager

March 2025

Free Report: 3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager

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