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 2.3% mindshare in APIM, compared to WSO2’s 4.8% 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

3,245 Views
2,419 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

WSO2 API Manager

Read 41 WSO2 API Manager reviews

6,382 Views
4,570 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

WSO2 API Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 847,862 peers since 2012

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 April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.3%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.8%, up from 4.1% 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

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

"The product is stable."

"The standard deployment is very simple."

"I like the API automation."

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

"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."

More 3scale API Management pros

"WSO2 API Manager provides strong internal API security, including token-based authentication and HTTPS support for various formats like REST. However, the newer API security features that are emerging are not available yet. They might be in development, but for now, internal API security is well-covered."

"WSO2 API Manager provides OAuth2 token capabilities that our customers use to interact, onboard new customers, and provide approvals whenever a customer is onboarded."

"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."

"The flexibility is definitely a highlight. We have flexible mapping capabilities, allowing us to provide common mappings or create custom ones as needed."

"The documentation is good."

"One of the great things about WSO2 API Manager is that it is so easy to adopt. And because it's an open source solution, we're able to extend the implementation any time to suit our company needs better."

"There are a lot of tools to help the manager. WSO2 is very easy to install. It has all the principal functionalities that you think about when you want to put up the management solution. It's a very friendly tool."

"Helped us to quickly publish our Microservice APIs and enforcing different policies against them, it comes up with features like Security, Throttling policy and it provides complete access to customize API's which actually saves development effort and time."

More WSO2 API Manager pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Basically, mTLS is a certificate-based communication protocol that WSO2 API Manager doesn't support."

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

"WSO2 API Manager could improve by adding external API security features, which is one area where there is room for enhancement. Internally, API security is strong, and all other necessary features are already available. It has a solid marketplace, supports both Docker and standalone setups, and offers great enterprise integration. The developer portal has greatly improved the user experience, making it simple and user-friendly wherever we’ve implemented it. Overall, it’s not as complicated as other API gateways."

"The interface needs to be modernized and made more user friendly so the product continues to have a growing community of users."

"For fresh graduates and engineers, the setup process can be very difficult."

"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."

"We found WSO2 API Manager to be a bit complex."

"In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool."

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."

"It is an open-source product."

"For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."

"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."

"We use the open-source version — the free version."

"WSO2 API Manager is an open-source solution."

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

"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."

"We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."

More WSO2 API Manager pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

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.

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 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 17% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Compared 14% 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 23% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 17% 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

Gravitee vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More WSO2 API Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

April 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

April 2025

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

Find out what your peers are saying about 3scale API Management vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our 3scale 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.