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Layer7 API Management vs MuleSoft API Manager vs TIBCO Cloud API Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Layer7 API Management is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft API Manager is 4.7%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Cloud API Management is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ronald D'Souza - PeerSpot reviewer
Has great drag-and-drop features and it requires minimal coding
I have mainly implemented using Layer 7 API Management. Some of the major challenges we were able to meet with a quick release to market methodology. Some of the tasks which we achieved for our customers were: 1. Translation service from SOAP to REST and vice versa. 2. API service to DB (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, Snowflake, SAP HANA) -- Created Swagger APIs that were able to perform CRUD operation to the backend API mentioned above and provided routes to query and get data. 3. Integration with Payment gateway service providers to perform (transaction on behalf of the customer with third-party payment gateway service providers white labeled with our APIs ) -- Followed TMF standards for payment gateway integration with the Telcom world. 4. Orchestration of the API. Build multiple microservers and provided orchestration based on route, path, and data in the request and perform actions that would be communicated with multiple APIs and provide a single consolidated response. 5. Provided API-driven security (Oauth 2.0, JWT, SAML, Basic, and a variety of means) to access the API giving the developer the freedom to concentrate only on application/service/microservice and let the gateway handle the threat. 6. Seamless Mutual Authentication allowed good segregation between APIs in the DMZ and internal network.
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.
Amitava Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers pre-built packages for quick and easy onboarding of APIs but configuration is not that easy
The configuration is not that easy. It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either. There are certain things where the performance is not that great. When the traffic is huge, we see some lag in performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a couple aspects of performance. One is just speed and uptime, and it's stellar in that regard. The other is, how much effort is it to put it in place in the first place, and then how much effort is it to keep it operational. That's where its real strength is. I'm able to do things quickly and easily that I couldn't do before​."
"Security is the most important parameter of the solution, for me, because whenever you are exposing your APIs to third-parties, it is critical that the data remains anonymous and that data is retained within the system, that it is not leaked. CA API Management provides good security features."
"What I found most valuable in Layer7 API Management is that you can launch the API from the gateway quickly and securely, making it less complicated to deploy APIs. I also like that Layer7 API Management has a good portal and dashboards and that the dashboards show you statistics regarding how many people used the API, etc."
"The most valuable feature is that it enables me to present data in the format that the client wants to consume it. That client might be a visualization tool, that client might be a report, that client might be a customer's API requirements."
"The level of technical support is good."
"Technical support is excellent, and I would rate them as ten."
"The Portal API helps us with deployments. It also helps to have a catalog of everything. The replication is also a critical feature for us. It helps to have a more robust architecture and makes our systems are highly available."
"Ease of use."
"Whenever there was an issue, the support was excellent."
"I found the authentication features very valuable, like how the tool provides client IDs and secrets and lets you apply authentication policies. We bought the Titanium package with analytics, which allowed us to do rate limiting and throttling. The API monitoring and alerting were also useful."
"It can create high-cost solutions, allowing for a great deal of customization to make it well-suited for specific needs."
"The MuleSoft Exchange and the Experience Hub stand out as the most valuable features."
"The ESB, the enterprise service bus is what we primarily use. In addition to that, the API management. These are the two tools which we have been using extensively. The enterprise platform."
"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."
"Overall, the platform is pretty good, I cannot say which one specific feature is good. The idea of an API manager is really interesting."
"We can completely manage the APIs at the org level and BU (business unit) level."
"The reason why we selected the solution originally was because of its ability to have a gateway both on-premise and in the cloud. This is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"The control that we have and the security features are very valuable. With regard to API implementation or API orchestration, it works very well in the cloud because as soon as you create an API with one click, you can actually expose your APIs."
"It is easy to work with ."
"Very few outages or SLA issues."
"When we did the product evaluation, we saw that TIBCO Mashery offers end-to-end API life cycle management. It provides all API features that are required for managing the complete life cycle. It includes the developer portal and tools for API monitorization. The out-of-box security features that TIBCO Mashery provides are enterprise-grade, which gives it an edge over other API products."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to have different packages based on the API keys. The same core system can have different packages based on different environments."
"Conversion to RESTful and SOAP protocols and management console (can manage individually throttled settings to manage our service levels for customers)."
 

Cons

"​The initial setup was very complex."
"Layer7 API Management could have a live API creator feature, so my team can easily create APIs. Right now, the product doesn't have that feature."
"The developer portal needs to fully supported SOAP services (including WSDL publication with security), it would certainly push adoption for us."
"The Portal lacks maturity. Since the move from Portal 3.x to 4.x, a lot of features were removed. It is slowly coming back. I can see a lot of changes are done in the "background" to decouple components and make it more flexible. Those changes are just not getting to the UI side quick enough."
"I would like for the new release to allow us to speed up code generation. The integration with CICD could also be more seamless."
"The setup was not as straightforward as it should have been. Support should be improved."
"There are old algorithms that the tool does not support - and it shouldn't, in my opinion. But sometimes customers need old algorithms, from old use cases and old applications, migrated to the platform. At those times, there are hiccups that happen."
"It would be nice if we could create APIs directly from Swagger files. We're doing that ourselves with a middle layer. But if you could integrate with open API Swagger specs, and then just create a Swagger and upload it to the gateway and it would create all my API template policy, and would apply the OAuth restrictions, the types of security restrictions I have on there, that would be pretty cool."
"Their studio performance is very slow, it requires a lot of memory, and should be improved."
"The solution's price is high."
"I'd like to see improvements in API Exchange. Currently, we can only expose APIs publicly. I want to categorize some APIs and expose them just to internal stakeholders. It would be great if they could log in to a developer portal, see our current APIs, view Swagger or RAML docs, and try request-response payloads."
"I'd like more monitoring and analyzing features included in the future."
"In the next release, Mulesoft should make it easier for people who don't have the native connectors to build their own rather than using the APA from the power platform or outlet."
"The most important thing that should be improved is that it is too heavy."
"The roadmap could include more GenAI use cases integrated into the platform, focusing on various industry verticals."
"Rather than focusing on numbers, they should focus more on the customer support service."
"The security needs improvement, specifically, propagation of security to an API. Calling other APIs is something that is missing in the product and that makes us think about going to a competitor."
"I'd like to see TIBCO integrate authentication and security features into Mashery."
"Policy management has been a bit of a concern."
"Monetization is not that great in API management. You need customization. Improvements are needed with sandbox local as well as with monetization. Those features are missing."
"It lacks many features at the API gateway compared to other solutions."
"The way agile life cycle is working needs improvement. I also want to see more support for open API standards. I want to see some improvement on the protocol transformation. That is quite missing now. These are the three main issues."
"It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management should improve its installation and make it easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends on your use case of course, how much you want to go with that, because it can get pricey and depends on the size of your company."
"It's my manager who takes care of the pricing. But I keep on hearing that it's a little pricey, it's on the higher side. That is what he says."
"For what we are after, the pricing is okay. It is competitive."
"Be aware of additional licenses for your warm standby. Ensure you get plenty of non-production licenses."
"If you do a TCO of more than five years, then you will see a big jump in costs for some vendors."
"I do not have experience with the pricing or licensing of the product."
"There are various licensing models for Layer7 API Management. We have to buy additional licenses to get new versions."
"I think it's competitive. It's not that expensive when you compare CA with the Oracle product."
"It is extremely high, and I would rate it one out of ten."
"The solution looks more expensive on the surface because it builds all the functions into one core component or into an integrated suite of components."
"The pricing for this solution is cheaper than GCP and Bluemix."
"The licensing model is based on how many cores are used. It is a very simple licensing scheme."
"I'm unsure about licensing costs because I'm not the person who handles this. But, ballpark, it's probably somewhere around $300,000-$400,000 or something like that."
"MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is an expensive solution."
"It's not very expensive, reasonably priced. There are no additional costs."
"When it comes to determining price, the pre-sales team interacts with the customer's primary integration team and the price is negotiated based on the specific usage of the system."
"Licensing is quite flexible."
"We have secured terms on which we have been happy to renew for a number of years."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management is not an expensive solution."
"Its price is pretty reasonable. There are some lightweight API options available in the market, but given the feature set that TIBCO provides, its price is really reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Layer7 API Management?
Pricing is more than average. While I am used to Layer7 API Management ( /products/layer7-api-management-reviews ), s...
What needs improvement with Layer7 API Management?
Broadcom's push for upgrades from version nine to ten, ten to 10.3, and onwards to twelve needs improvement in migrat...
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 sof...
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...
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 po...
What do you like most about TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The platform's most valuable features are its capabilities to support security measures such as tokenization, token r...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Cloud API Management?
My primary role was to assess the solution from a capability perspective. So, there are some issues with the licensin...
What needs improvement with TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The configuration is not that easy. It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the secu...
 

Also Known As

CA API Management, CA Live API Creator, Espresso Logic, CA API Gateway
Anypoint API Manager
Mashery API Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. IBM  2. Microsoft  3. Oracle  4. Salesforce  5. SAP  6. Cisco  7. Dell  8. HP  9. Adobe  10. VMware  11. Accenture  12. Capgemini  13. Deloitte  14. PwC  15. Ernst & Young  16. Infosys  17. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services)  18. Wipro  19. Cognizant  20. HCL Technologies  21. Tech Mahindra  22. Fujitsu  23. Hitachi  24. NEC  25. NTT Data  26. Ericsson  27. Nokia  28. Siemens  29. AT&T  30. Verizon  31. Vodafone  32. Orange
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
uShip, Sabre, TouchTunes, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, athenahealth, Coca-Cola Enterprises, CentralIndex.com, Constant Contact, Edmunds.com, FoodEssentials, Getty Images, Klout, Rovi, Rotten Tomatoes, Sportradar, TomTom, ACTIVE.com
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in API Management. Updated: April 2025.
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