IBM API Connect vs SwaggerHub comparison

IBM and SmartBear are both solutions in the API Management category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.1, while SmartBear is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5. IBM holds a 6.5% mindshare in APIM, compared to SmartBear’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of SmartBear users who would recommend it.

IBM API Connect

Read 75 IBM API Connect reviews

10,770 Views
8,108 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SwaggerHub

Read 10 SwaggerHub reviews

2,681 Views
2,036 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM API Connect

SwaggerHub

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM API Connect and SwaggerHub based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two API Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub

October 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect

Ranking in API Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)

SwaggerHub

Ranking in API Management

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.5%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwaggerHub is 1.3%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan

Solutions Architect at Synechron

Jan 15, 2024

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.

Read full review

Murahari Bandarupalli

Senior Consultant at Capgemini

Apr 23, 2024

Simplifies API design and development for developers

SwaggerHub simplifies API development for developers by providing a platform where they can efficiently create APIs without manually creating JSON or visual files. Developers can streamline the process of developing APIs and generating requests. SwaggerHub is a platform used for API design and management. Postman serves as a tool for creating and testing API requests. While Postman offers capabilities for scripting and automation, SwaggerHub focuses on defining APIs using the OpenAPI Specification, facilitating collaboration, and generating documentation automatically. While there may be ways to integrate Postman scripts into other testing tools like JMeter, such integration would typically require manual effort and customization. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main benefits of IBM API Connect for our API life cycle management are the core API functionalities, the developer's portal, and robust security capabilities. IBM API Connect's security protocols enhance our data protection strategies by offering end-to-end security, mechanisms to counter common attacks like DDoS, and the ability to define policies for API groups to control traffic and prevent unwanted access to our systems."

"The management of the API and API portal is good."

"It is a complete all-in-one solution."

"The centralized management: this provides a management module that can deploy and apply security policies to all APIs, including all the gateways that are deployed on-premises and on any cloud because the gateway component can run at a VMware or in a Kubernetes cluster."

"API Connect's most valuable feature is its ability to act as a gateway. It's very easy to configure security and everything else in it. You don't have to kill yourself implementing custom configurations."

"IBM API Connect is a reliable and scalable solution."

"Security is well organized and managed within the solution."

"WSRR is a powerful component for getting the endpoints."

More IBM API Connect pros

"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."

"The scalability is endless."

"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 most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."

"Code generation is one of the important features of SwaggerHub. We design our API, and we can generate a very rich codebase and add to it. The code generation feature is very valuable."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."

More SwaggerHub pros

Cons

"It would be helpful to have access monitoring."

"It is expensive within this class of products."

"Extracting the data could be improved."

"We would have more capability to interact with the catalog and inventories, so a more DevOps-friendly solution is needed."

"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."

"Our main pain points are in these two areas: creating a better developer portal and improving stability in terms of synchronization and monetization."

"We ran it on top of the Kubernetes cluster, so it wasn't a standalone service. In the worst-case scenario, API Connect couldn't stay online if all the containers went down. We had to restart all the services. We shut down all the containers automatically one by one."

"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."

More IBM API Connect cons

"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"

"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."

"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."

"It could be more intuitive compared to one of its competitors."

"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."

"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."

"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."

"SwaggerHub lacks in terms of integrations. They have APIs integrated, and they also have some connectors, but they don't have integration with many of the things that we use. For example, for connecting with SVN, we had to implement external scripts. So, they should work on the integration because currently, we have to work on the integration with our DevOps, continuous delivery, or continuous deployment. It would be great if these integrations are built-in. Mainly, we would like it to integrate with SVN and Jira."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."

"The pricing is significantly high."

"It is quite an expensive product."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing is too expensive with IBM. Sometimes, we prefer to go with an open source or something more lightweight."

"It would be a good idea to bring down the pricing by at least 20 to 30 percent."

More IBM API Connect pricing and cost advice

"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."

"The management considers it a bit expensive. At first, we wanted to purchase a license for 100 users, but we went for a license for only 15 users. Its cost is $10,220 per year."

"The tool is cheap."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?

It is a pretty expensive tool. The tool is expensive if I consider how products like WSO2 are available in the market. You have pretty much many options in the open-source community, considering ho...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?

The only downside where improvements are needed is probably on the licensing side. Scalability is an issue with IBM API Connect, making it an area where improvements are required.

See all answers

What do you like most about SwaggerHub?

The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?

I noticed that the editor on SwaggerHub, like Gabbiti, is graphical in nature. With this mind map interface, one can easily define endpoints and paths. The solution is lacking behind because it not...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?

When you want to define an API with your customers using SwaggerHub, you first interact with them to understand their requirements. Then, you proceed to build the API definition. This involves crea...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 24% of the time

Apigee vs IBM API Connect

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM API Connect

Compared 16% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs IBM API Connect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM API Connect Competitors

Microsoft Azure API Management vs SwaggerHub

Compared 31% of the time

Apigee vs SwaggerHub

Compared 24% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs SwaggerHub

Compared 9% of the time

Stoplight vs SwaggerHub

Compared 6% of the time

RapidAPI vs SwaggerHub

Compared 5% of the time

More SwaggerHub Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect

October 2024

Download IBM API Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

SwaggerHub

October 2024

Download SwaggerHub product report

Learn More

IBM

SmartBear

Overview

IBM API Connect facilitates API management and integration in the financial sector. Companies use it to expose, secure, and manage APIs for banking, insurance, and fintech, deploying it on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution.

IBM API Connect focuses on creating and monetizing APIs while enabling seamless transactions and integration with third-party services. It is vital for compliance with regulations and enhances external communication among institutions. With deployment options suitable for different environments, it supports centralized gateway management, robust security features, and comprehensive API lifecycle management. Users benefit from powerful analytics, user-friendly interfaces, and high performance with capabilities in message transformation and efficient monitoring.

What are the most important features?

Centralized Gateway: Manages all APIs through a single entry point.
Robust Security: Ensures API protection with advanced security measures.
Comprehensive API Lifecycle Management: Covers creation, deployment, and retirement of APIs.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies API creation and management tasks.
Powerful Analytics: Provides insights into API usage and performance.
Seamless Integration: Connects easily with third-party services and internal systems.
Flexible Deployment Options: Supports on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
High Performance: Optimizes API performance and reduces latency.
Message Transformation: Manipulates and formats messages between different systems.
Visualization Tools: Enables clear and detailed views of API usage statistics.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

API Monetization: Generates additional revenue streams from APIs.
Enhanced Compliance: Ensures adherence to industry regulations and standards.
Improved External Communication: Facilitates integration and communication among financial institutions.
Technical Support: Benefit from reliable customer support and easy configuration.
Deployment Flexibility: Choose from on-premises, cloud, or hybrid options.

IBM API Connect is extensively implemented in the financial sector, enabling banking, insurance, and fintech services to manage APIs efficiently. Companies use it to ensure secure transactions, integration with third-party services, and compliance with regulatory standards. Its deployment flexibility accommodates different infrastructure needs, making it suitable for a wide range of financial applications.

SwaggerHub is an integrated API Development platform, built for teams, that brings the core capabilities of the Swagger framework to design, build, document and deploy APIs. SwaggerHub enables development teams to collaborate and coordinate the entire lifecycle of an API with the flexibility to integrate with the toolset of your choice.

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub

October 2024

Free Report: IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub report.

See our list of best API Management vendors.

We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.