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Apiary vs IBM API Connect vs SwaggerHub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Apiary is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.3%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwaggerHub is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

PW
The ability to configure rules to check for consistency has helped
Apiary provides a free tier of the platform which allows a small group of developers to collaborate easily on the design of open source APIs. In addition to this, it provides mock endpoints allowing people to experiment with the API without depending or having to stand up a real backend. With our clients, using Apiary allows us to very quickly pull together an API definition (particularly when using API Blueprint). The whole API design process for the simpler use cases can be done in a relatively short workshop which makes it a lot easier to agree, publish, version-manage an API definition with suitable documentation. This can then be evolved and enhanced (particularly in the documentation aspects). With the ability to support Swagger (Open API v2 and introducing/ed support for v3) and API Blueprint makes it a very versatile tool.
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.
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

"In two years, there was one time the service was down for an hour or so."
"Quick and easy way to share a new API design with teams."
"Git integration"
"I do like the overall performance of the solution."
"I find the generation of mock services very useful, especially when demonstrating for new consumers."
"It allows enterprises to expose some of their tech to outside stakeholders."
"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."
"Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules."
"I have found the API Management to be most valuable."
"The solution provides a common place for all APIs, allowing for easy sharing and exchange of information between internal and external stakeholders."
"It has all of the tools that are needed for the specific mission."
"Overall, I rate it nine out of ten."
"API Connect is a very good platform for the development of APIs."
"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"It is a stable solution."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."
"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."
"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."
"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."
 

Cons

"The Oracle release cycle is very bad because the patches only update once a year."
"Swagger (OpenAPI Specification) and Blueprint Support"
"I would like an integrated option to download a Swagger version of the definition."
"In the next version, I don't know if they've already been included it or not, but the designer and all the tools should be on the cloud. I don't want any external installation or local installation."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."
"It should be cheaper."
"Our main pain points are in these two areas: creating a better developer portal and improving stability in terms of synchronization and monetization."
"I would like to see automation of the installation. If there could be a single-click function where you could automate everything, that would be helpful."
"Like any typical IBM infrastructure setup, you need to learn to set it up yourself. It's not one of those simple zip files or an archive unzip and you're up and running in some few minutes. Knowledge to set it up is key."
"It could be more intuitive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"
"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."
"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."
"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a free subscription option to start and try the service."
"It is easy to get started with personal (free) accounts, but a subscription is required for additional features."
"The price for IBM API Connect is reasonable. It's $20,000 to $30,000 yearly for a subscription, and the pricing could vary around $40,000 per year, per subscription. Its price is reasonable for customers who have around sixty million API calls yearly for unlimited environments."
"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"It's an expensive product."
"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."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"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."
"It should be cheaper. It has a yearly licensing."
"API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution."
"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."
"The tool is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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 poten...
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...
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...
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, ...
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 w...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, salesforce.com, Bloomberg, GoodData, Viacom, Akamai Technologies, DigitalGlobe
Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in API Management. Updated: June 2025.
861,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.