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Oracle Application Express (APEX) vs ServiceNow 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

Oracle Application Express ...
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (2nd), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th)
ServiceNow
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
224
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Oracle Application Express (APEX) is 6.0%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 6.5%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow6.5%
Oracle Application Express (APEX)6.0%
Other87.5%
Rapid Application Development Software
 

Featured Reviews

Rodrigo-Mesquita - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software developer at QV Systems
Rapid application development empowers big projects in months
The ability to quickly develop applications without needing to code a lot is very valuable. It is very quick to create a page, and one can use AI to speed up software development. It is easy to learn. In my company, we could develop a very big application in a couple of months.
MT
Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency
I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In our experience with Apex, we find that minimizing reliance on HTML and JavaScript is preferable, especially considering our background as seasoned programmers adept in PL/SQL. Incorporating HTML and JavaScript can pose challenges due to potential compatibility issues when updates are made to JavaScript. We also make use of JAPER report integration for generating reports, a practice integral to our reporting procedures."
"If I have a database and therefore structured data, and I want to create an application to work with it, it's the quickest possible environment that I can do it in."
"Efficient software delivery and a solution that works quickly."
"The valuable features are charts, reports, and search engines."
"I like that Oracle Application Express (APEX) is powerful and attractive, allowing my organization to modernize forms within two months. I also found its PWA feature very powerful because you can produce substantial mobile applications."
"The product is fast."
"It has a well-designed architecture and is a simple 3rd party application."
"We set up the HTTP server and installed the Apex Xamarin DB using the Mark Hill SQL packages for an older version. That's the extent of our configuration."
"The Workflow feature is the most valuable."
"Data in reports and dashboards are easily accessible."
"I find the incident management part to be the most valuable. That's how the service desk tracks tickets."
"If it is a high priority, they will respond very quickly. If it is a low priority issue, it might take some time, some three or four days. I would rate the technical support as a 10 out of 10."
"It is a very promising product. They have a new release every six months. They're investing quite a lot, and you can do many creative things with the product. If you know how it works, you can have stricter rules in the product."
"ServiceNow is a cloud solution. That fact was very important for us, that it is not an on-prem solution, as it reduces our internal cost of support."
"We consider the integration capabilities of the solution with other tools to be a valuable feature."
"I really like ServiceNow and all of the features. The way incident management is built is very helpful. You have a lot of options to optimize it, customize it, and automate it. You also have a lot of options for reporting. There are plenty of possibilities to do preference management within your customer CMDB file. These are very useful features, which I missed in BMC Remedy ITSM. ServiceNow is the best ticketing tool I have used so far."
 

Cons

"There is one disadvantage. When facing problems, it can be difficult to find solutions online (Google/YouTube), unlike with Java coding, where solutions are readily available on Google."
"I would like to see easier integration into active directory authentication. Also, maybe integration of JavaScript frameworks would resolve some issues."
"It can be modern and more user-friendly."
"The solution’s pricing is high if you use it on the OCA platform. It’s also a little bit costly. However, if we use it on an on-premises Oracle database, the pricing is cheaper."
"Being able to only design with HTML and CSS can be limiting as to what can be accomplished."
"It has been reported that the technology is very hard to learn, and the service is expensive."
"Some of the application interfaces of Oracle Application Express are not very attractive and could be improved."
"Oracle should implement vertical and horizontal data segmentation in APEX's security framework, so Dev teams don't need to do any heavy lifting in the APEX screens. This is a common issue in enterprise apps. It would be nice to seamlessly integrate Git repositories into the development process since the current solution can result in overlapping work or an eventual overwrite. The provided example apps are great, but they could benefit from some added documentation in the "explanation screens"."
"An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."
"We don't have a huge amount of password reset requests, but the minimum package of resets that ServiceNow offers is much more than we need."
"There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great."
"The user interface for accessing assistance sometimes disconnects."
"If you have advanced questions, technical support often doesn't know the answer."
"ServiceNow's mobile app should be seamless and it is not right now."
"All the screens are similar. It's the same platform for everything and you need to familiarize yourself with it. In the past, you used to have one screen per application. Now, you have everything integrated into one. Everybody will manage the same screen and they need to navigate into the same screen as the Internet Explorer with a toolbar with the categories and look for the things you want to see or the models you want to use."
"The biggest complaint I have is that the ServiceNow search engine is not very robust."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is mid-range so is neither expensive nor cheap."
"I would rate it around an eight in terms of price, with one being low and ten being high."
"It is expensive, but I don't know what the licensing cost is."
"APEX itslelf is a free product, but you will need to license peripheral components."
"When buying the data license, APEX is included."
"To my understanding, my organization is using the free version of Oracle Application Express (APEX), but I'm unsure because I haven't checked the pricing or licensing cost for it."
"When you have a licensed database in an Oracle environment, APEX is free."
"Apex is not priced separately; instead, it is associated with the Oracle database. A free option for Oracle database and Apex can be downloaded and installed on this complimentary database version. This aligns with our current approach."
"I know that it's not too bad because people continue to use it and they are happy to renew up their contract."
"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."
"$230 per user."
"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."
"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."
"The platform offers a free trial, by providing a free developer instance once you sign up."
"The setup cost is high compared to others, especially when the scope is not fixed."
"Some time ago it was expensive, but large companies have special contracts. It's enterprise prices, and we're talking about millions per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise166
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Oracle Application Express (APEX)?
I have only tried it with an Oracle database, not with other databases. For beginners, understanding the installation process can be challenging because documentation is limited. It is hard to unde...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ServiceNow has a very strong module (Performance Analysis) reporting which will ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Also Known As

Oracle APEX
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hepart AG, pharmasol, SATLOG, Collège Bois-de-Boulogne
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle Application Express (APEX) vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.