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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Red Hat Fuse comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)
Red Hat Fuse
Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 5.9%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Fuse is 7.2%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts
While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.
Kaushal Kedia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a single console for all applications and supports Camel routing
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red Hat Fuse; the screen displayed that the containers had gone down while, in reality, they were running in the background. The user interface and the back-end code were not in sync in the aforementioned situation, which our organization frequently faced while using Red Hat Fuse. But at our company, we were using an older version of Red Hat Fuse in which we faced the issues. From the JBOS end, the product was very frequently changed from Red Hat, and it was difficult for our clients to keep investing money in every upgrade. Six or seven years back, Red Hat Fuse was one of the best solutions.

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 very easy to work with."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."
"What I like most is the stability."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"The stability has been good."
"Red Hat Fuse's best features are that it's very easy to set up and maintain."
"The support training that comes with the product is amazing."
"Because we have been doing Red Hat Fuse projects for three years, and over time we have matured, we can employ similar use cases and make use of accelerators or templates. It gives us an edge when we deliver these services or APIs quickly."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. We are an enterprise business."
"It's very lightweight. There's no need for any specialized tools in order to deploy any service for Red Hat Fuse."
"One of the features I found most valuable in Red Hat Fuse is that it has a lot of containers so you won't have to worry about load balancing. In the past, there was a cut-off, but nowadays, Red Hat Fuse is moving off of that, so my team is utilizing it the most for load balancing, particularly running goal applications and three to five containers. There's automatic load balancing so you won't have to worry too much. I also found that component-wise, you don't have to do much coding in Red Hat Fuse because everything is configurable, for example, XML-based coding. Coding isn't that difficult. Performance-wise, I also found the solution to be quite good and its processing is quite fast. My team is processing a huge amount of data with the help of Red Hat Fuse."
"The solution has more tooling and options."
 

Cons

"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"It is a costly product."
"Its support services could be better."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"Scripting needs improvement. It's hard for our customers."
"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
"There is definitely a bit of a learning curve."
"I don't know the product last versions. I know they are migrating a microservices concepts. We still didn't get there... but we are in the process."
"Our clients would like to see the user interface improved so that it is more user-friendly."
"I would like to see more up-to-date documentation and examples from Red Hat Fuse."
"My company doesn't have any experience with other messaging tools, so it's difficult to mention what areas could be improved in Red Hat Fuse, but it could be pricing because I find it expensive."
"The pricing model could be adjusted. The price should be lower."
"The stability of the solution is an area with a shortcoming that needs to be improved."
"Red Hat is not easy to learn. You can learn it but you sometimes need external expertise to implement solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."
"The product is expensive."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"It is an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive product. It costs a lot and although it's worth the money, the explanations that we need to give to our top executives are highly complicated."
"Red Hat Fuse saved us money. It is a lot easier to license for cloud deployments."
"Our license for Red Hat Fuse is around $27,000 per year, which is very expensive."
"After doing some Googling and comparisons, the main standouts were MuleSoft and Red Hat Fuse. One of the big factors in our decision to go with Fuse was the licensing cost. It was cheaper to go with Fuse."
"Pricing has been something that we have been working with Red Hat on, year over year. We have preferred pricing with the university because we are involved in education and research."
"In terms of pricing, Red Hat Fuse is a bit expensive because nowadays, if I'm just comparing it with OpenShift with Kubernetes, so Kubernetes and OpenShift, are similar, and Kubernetes is open source, so Red Hat Fuse is quite expensive in terms of support, but Red Hat Fuse provides value for money because it provides good support. If you want to get something, you need to pay for it."
"The most important feature of Fuse is the cost. It is open source and a cheap option for an ESB. So, most of the clients in the Middle East and Asian countries prefer this ESB. Other ESBs, like MuleSoft and IBM API Connect, are pretty expensive. Because it is open source, Red Hat Fuse is the cheapest solution, providing almost every integration capability."
"You need to pay for the license. It's not free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?
The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...
What do you like most about Red Hat Fuse?
The process workflow, where we can orchestrate and design the application by defining different routes, is really useful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Fuse?
You need to pay for the license. It's not free. I'm not aware of the exact prices. There are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing since it is a subscription-based solution.
What needs improvement with Red Hat Fuse?
Containerization is one key area where the product can improve, but it probably has already improved in JBOS integration. On a few occasions, our company's production team faced an issue with Red H...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Fuse ESB, FuseSource
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Avianca, American Product Distributors (APD), Kings College Hospital, AMD, CenturyLink, AECOM, E*TRADE
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Red Hat Fuse and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.