F5 Aspen Mesh vs Forum Systems Sentry: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

F5 Aspen Mesh: Istio-based service mesh for 5G microservices & cloud-native deployments. built by F5. Core capabilities include Istio-based service mesh with traffic control and policy enforcement, IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networking support, Packet Inspector for service mesh traffic capture and visibility..

Forum Systems Sentry: API security & Zero Trust enforcement for Docker microservices. built by Forum Systems. Core capabilities include API security and control for Docker containerized microservices, Zero Trust enforcement at the Docker node architecture level, East-west and north-south data protection..

Both serve the Container Security market but differ in approach, feature depth, and target audience.

F5 Aspen Mesh differentiates with Istio-based service mesh with traffic control and policy enforcement, IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networking support, Packet Inspector for service mesh traffic capture and visibility. Forum Systems Sentry differentiates with API security and control for Docker containerized microservices, Zero Trust enforcement at the Docker node architecture level, East-west and north-south data protection.

F5 Aspen Mesh is developed by F5. Forum Systems Sentry is developed by Forum Systems. Vendor maturity, funding stage, and team size can be important factors when evaluating long-term viability and support quality.

F5 Aspen Mesh and Forum Systems Sentry serve similar Container Security use cases: both are Container Security tools. Review the feature comparison above to determine which fits your requirements.