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IBM API Connect vs TIBCO Cloud API Management 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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (9th)
TIBCO Cloud API Management
Ranking in API Management
28th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.3%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Cloud API Management is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers basic API orchestration and provides robust security and governance features
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. Overall, I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Almost all applications we've been exposing lately go through this middleware, so it's used extensively. There are around sixty applications directly using it, but six Kubernetes clusters serve those applications. It's heavily used for integration, including system-to-system integration and product integrations. Our usage has been increasing year-on-year based on our needs.
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

"The solution offers a pretty good SLA."
"The most valuable features of IBM API Connect are its performance and user-friendliness."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"API Connect is a good product, and everything works fine. All the analytics are good, and it is easy to follow up. I like it in that sense. I'm more focused on following up on analytics by seeing how many API calls we are getting and where we see a lot of problems. I was working on that API level."
"Easy to configure security and generate API keys."
"The most valuable features are stability and security."
"It has all of the tools that are needed for the specific mission."
"We really like the runtime capabilities of IBM API Connect. The creation of products and the control of the monetization and hit rate are some of the features which we've found very valuable."
"Very few outages or SLA issues."
"Conversion to RESTful and SOAP protocols and management console (can manage individually throttled settings to manage our service levels for customers)."
"It is easy to work with ."
"The most valuable aspect of Mashery is its stability."
"The solution is a good general API manager. They have a few propriety features but are offering items that are standard in the industry as well."
"We can completely manage the APIs at the org level and BU (business unit) level."
"This has provided a new stream of traffic and exposure of our catalogue beyond the normal web store offering."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management has brought numerous benefits for our organization, especially in product maturity and support."
 

Cons

"Documentation for the CLI is not very complete. Also, the support could be improved, and we have had several problems with backing up and restoring the product."
"IBM info-center help documentation also needs improvement. Competitive product like Apigee provide out of the box policies to run Javascript, JAVA and better/flexible logging policies."
"The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support."
"The product's setup phase and its setup for the users in different environments, along with DevOps integration, are areas of concern where there is a need for improvement."
"There are some performance issues and issues related to asynchronous APIs."
"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 should be cheaper."
"Extracting the data could be improved."
"They can fix some stability issues and probably make it more user-friendly so that not only an IT savvy person but an end-user can also easily navigate through this solution."
"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."
"We observed delays under heavy load conditions, and without proper tuning, changes could take an extended period to filter and become effective."
"The management console of API and customers' applications are not the most intuitive."
"It lacks many features at the API gateway compared to other solutions."
"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."
"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."
"I'd like to see TIBCO integrate authentication and security features into Mashery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"It can be quite expensive. It's okay for large-scale usage but quite expensive for smaller-scale implementations."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."
"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"API Connect was highly expensive for us, but the decision to switch was made before I joined the company. It seems like the company bought it, but they didn't know how to use it. After two years, they decided to reevaluate and conduct some cost estimates."
"We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee."
"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."
"We have secured terms on which we have been happy to renew for a number of years."
"Licensing is quite flexible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Educational Organization
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

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 TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The platform's most valuable features are its capabilities to support security measures such as tokenization, token refresh, throttling, and enforcement of payloads.
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 licensing cost.
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 security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either. There are certain things whe...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Mashery API Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
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 IBM API Connect vs. TIBCO Cloud API Management and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.