IBM DataPower Gateway vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus comparison

IBM and TIBCO are both solutions in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while TIBCO is ranked #12 with an average rating of 6.0. IBM holds a 6.6% mindshare in E, compared to TIBCO’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of TIBCO users who would recommend it.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 30 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,383 Views
861 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Read 12 TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus reviews

663 Views
663 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus are competing products in the enterprise integration and connectivity domain, each demonstrating unique strengths. TIBCO ActiveMatrix shines with a strong feature set and perceived value, while IBM DataPower Gateway offers more favorable pricing and support.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway stands out in security and integration capabilities tailored to API management and data processing. Its features include comprehensive security measures, thorough data processing, and seamless API management. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is notable for its flexibility, extensive integration capabilities, and diverse connectivity options, enhancing adaptability to complex environments.

Room for Improvement: IBM DataPower Gateway could enhance its flexibility and expand its integration options to match diverse infrastructure needs. Additionally, it might benefit from more advanced deployment customization and increased feature variety. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus could improve in reducing its associated setup costs, enhancing its security features, and streamlining licensing processes for better customer accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway offers straightforward deployment options featuring extensive customer support, ensuring efficient setup and management. On the other hand, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus provides a more adaptable deployment process suitable for varied infrastructures, coupled with responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway is linked with a more appealing initial setup cost and rapid ROI, thanks to strategic pricing. In contrast, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus, while potentially involving higher initial investment, presents a robust feature set that justifies its cost, promising a substantial long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

September 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

IBM DataPower Gateway

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (12th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.6%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is 3.9%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway	6.6%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus	3.9%
Other	89.5%

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

AkshaySawant

Manager at CSB Bank Ltd

Security features excel but development limitations emerge

We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

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Mustofa Yonus

Cheif Specialist- Licensing Systems at Roads & Transport Authority

A robust product that needs to improve the functionality it offers related to API lifecycle management

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six to seven out of ten. My company consists of around 7000 employees, and we use the solution as an integrated service in around 300 to 400 systems, both internally and externally, making it a huge number. Our company uses the solution every minute and every second, and we can't function without it.

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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

"The performance is good. It's been very stable."

"You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present."

"It is very easy to set up and configure, even for users with no prior experience."

"The scalability of the solution is good."

"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."

"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."

"The solution is stable."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"The solution is very stable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust."

"The most valuable feature is that it is a service-oriented architecture, SOA-based."

"The stability of this solution is excellent."

"The product’s most valuable feature is stability."

"It's very stable and reliable."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring, ease of use, and easy to understand development GUI."

"TIBCO has the platform in terms of speed and ease of use."

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus pros

Cons

"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."

"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."

"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."

"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive."

"I would like the tool to improve its training."

"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product. Sometimes, when the customer use case is just a very small subset of what's being offered in IBM DataPower Gateway, then the product can be expensive, making my company lose some of the opportunities because of the expensive pricing. A lower price point for IBM DataPower Gateway, even if that results in a less feature-rich version, would be appreciated. In terms of additional features that I'd like to see in the next release of IBM DataPower Gateway, nothing specific comes to mind because IBM constantly improves its standards and provides quarterly updates to the product, so it's quite fine."

"The initial setup isn't so easy, you need who has experience working with the solution to help."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"Migration to cloud solutions or products should be made convenient, transparent, and easily understandable."

"In the next release, there should be improvements made to the API manager."

"I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors."

"We'd like to see improvements in product support."

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"In the configuration, where we need to customize, it takes more time that we expect it to, ideally."

"Our version does not have cloud capabilities."

"The solution is very expensive when you use multiple components, it would b better if this could be reduced."

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."

"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 solution is expensive in comparison to other products."

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."

"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 cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost is a challenge for quite a few customers."

"The biggest issue disadvantage of TIBCO is that it is expensive."

"The price is on the higher side. For the same price, if I go to the previous version, I would have got a lot more capacity with similar kinds of features."

"Its licensing cost is considerably high as compared to other ESBs."

"Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive."

"When it comes to cost, TIBCO is much more competitive than a product like Pega."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?

This product is definitely expensive because if any issue occurs in the live environment or production environment, and our organization faces some issue with the IBM DataPower Gateway, then the IB...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

I have significant experience with the IBM DataPower Gateway. As a security product, it is very good. However, from the development perspective, it has limitations because it only supports the XSLT...

See all answers

What do you like most about TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance is robust.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?

Price-wise, I would say that the product is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus?

I don't like the product's API management platform, as it doesn't offer users enough functionality to help with API lifecycle management, making it a product that is way behind its competitors. The...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 35% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

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IBM Integration Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 39% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 22% of the time

Mule ESB vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 21% of the time

Workday Business Process Framework vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Compared 9% of the time

More TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

October 2025

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

October 2025

Download TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

ActiveMatrix Service Bus

Overview

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present. From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is a platform for developing, deploying, and managing applications that conform to a service-oriented architecture. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus is a lightweight enterprise service bus that helps organizations bridge the mediation gap in their SOA infrastructure. It reduces complexity and increases flexibility and reuse by replacing hard-coded service dependencies with configuration, and can be used to onboard services from a third-party environment or a TIBCO-based infrastructure. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus provides service mediation capabilities to the TIBCO ActiveMatrix SOA platform. Service mediation allows you to adapt to changing requirements for developing mediation flows.

TIBCO

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

Colonial Life, CTBC Bank, New World Mobility, QUALCOMM, Swisscom Mobile, T-Mobile USA, Tata Teleservices, Telecom Italia

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus

September 2025

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