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IBM API Connect vs SwaggerHub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 API Connect
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)
SwaggerHub
Ranking in API Management
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwaggerHub is 1.4%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Quite flexible and provides excellent performance for API gateway
The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support, which can be considered quite expensive. In terms of new functionality, I think the analytics can be improved in V10. The analytics feature was better in the older version, 2.18. But in V10, it's not as flexible. When exporting analytics as KSP or JSON, it's not well formatted. They can work on enhancing the analytics part. Additionally, they can focus on reducing the hardware cost.
SwaminathanSubramanian - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitating enterprise-wide API governance and management
Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account. The scalability also needs enhancement, as it becomes flaky under increased load. Additionally, the versioning management could be improved to be on par with source code management tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."
"Since it runs on top of Datapower, all Datapower based custom policies can be utilized and exported to API connect but its not straightforward/simple process."
"I have found the API Management to be most valuable."
"The statistics component is easy to use."
"The ability for all of our web applications to share standard functions and documents easily is valuable."
"This is a very easy to use solution."
"Scalable and stable API platform for creating and managing APIs."
"The gateway is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"The most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."
"It is quite a useful tool. It is quite good with the validation of the spec. It works quite well in terms of errors and conformity to the OpenAPI standard. It is better than Visual Studio Code in terms of editing."
"The tool's most valuable feature is licensing."
"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."
"You can click & play and add the notation in a human-readable form. Spotlight is also very good in the graphical design of APIs."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"The implementation process could benefit from improvements, as it may take some time to become accustomed to the deployment."
"While Azure API Management offers configurable scalability, IBM API Connect relies on Kubernetes clusters. This might seem manual and require defining cluster instances upfront, but it's completely customizable and not on-the-fly scaling. It's completely custom-driven, not on-the-fly scaling, which some may consider cumbersome."
"It's based on a little bit dated architecture. A lot of evolution has happened after that. It's an evolving field. Kong is a Kubernetes-based platform. Kong runs on Kubernetes, but all the other ones are in microservices. So, there's a lot of improvement that can be done."
"Support for this platform could still be improved. It also needs to have more levels of versatility. Its compatibility and integration with different platforms also need improvement."
"The only downside where improvements are needed is probably on the licensing side."
"The solution is overly complex."
"Business applications could be exposed to users."
"The solution would be better if it had cloud functionalities."
"Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account."
"The scalability aspect of SwaggerHub can be improved. It becomes a bit unreliable when the load is increased and isn't up to par with expectations for scalability."
"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."
"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."
"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."
"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"
"The review process should be improved. There seem to be some gaps, at least for us, for the editing part because we would like to have a full request review mechanism. They support some comments, but it is really hard to manage those comments. We would like to use the full request. Therefore, we are now looking to integrate with repositories. It has integration with Bitbucket and GitHub, but we have some internal constraints, and we need to move some of the repositories to GitHub. Our source code is on-premise in Bitbucket, and it was a bit of a problem for us to integrate. Now we are transitioning our repositories to GitHub, and hopefully, we can enable the integration. This will probably solve the problem with the review and approval. Its customization should also be improved. There are limitations around the support for the developer portal. There should be more customization options for the website that you can use as a developer portal. Currently, it has only Swagger UI with minimal customization. You cannot actually add additional pages and documentation for explaining concepts and general things. That's why we have started to look around to see what other tools are doing. They should also allow tagging on the API. We would like to add some tagging on the API to reflect certain things. Currently, any metadata that you would like to have has to be a part of the spec. You cannot do anything else. It should also have support for Open API 3.1, which was released at the beginning of the year. It would be great to be able to switch to that."
"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a pretty expensive tool."
"It is an expensive solution. The licensing model is based on a per-subscription and per-subscriber end-user basis, meaning the price is determined by the end-users of the platform."
"API Connect is quite pricey."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."
"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."
"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."
"It would be a good idea to bring down the pricing by at least 20 to 30 percent."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."
"The tool is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM API Connect?
Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments. I don't deal with licensing, but compared to other IBM products, the licensing is not significantly higher.
What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?
When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ ( /categories/message-queue-mq...
What do you like most about SwaggerHub?
The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.
What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?
Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account....
What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?
I started using SwaggerHub in its previous version, SmartMiner, with a tool called SoapUI. I used it to create mock web services to test web services and create test scripts and mock APIs. This usa...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.