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Appian vs Oracle Application Express (APEX) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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

Appian
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
9th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (10th), Process Automation (8th), Process Mining (8th)
Oracle Application Express ...
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
3rd
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 8.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Application Express (APEX) is 7.6%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software
 

Featured Reviews

Kunal Sharda - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enables seamless automation and elevates process efficiency while embracing innovative technologies
The features of Appian that have proven to be the most beneficial are its capability to create processes and integrate with external systems while ensuring data consistency across all the systems. The latest features of Appian are quite useful around the UI/UX design and the artificial intelligence integrations. Appian is aiding in leveraging AI technologies in multiple ways: one way is for developers, as they make development efficient and quick by enabling developer co-pilots across various phases of the application, which helps design Appian quickly and provides suggestions along the way. Another way is through AI Skills, which can be integrated anywhere in the process model to leverage artificial intelligence for tasks such as extracting data from documents, summarizing information from documents or long paragraphs, and building custom prompts with Appian. Appian also utilizes AI for business users, providing a feature called process each view, enabling business users to create their own dashboards, reports, and gain insights from their data and processes using artificial intelligence. It's multi-fold and always growing.
Rodrigo-Mesquita - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is easy."
"Appian is a very low code platform. It's very easy to learn and use."
"The agile manner that we require to create our workflows. This is probably the most critical part of our solution and the time it takes to start processing the solution."
"It has good integrations. We were looking for out-of-the-box integration with both on-prem and publicly accessible data sources. We needed integration with the cloud, OData, our REST API feed, and then on-prem passthrough to go to a SQL database or on-prem APIs through Azure local deployment, etc."
"It has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly."
"The valuable features include process automation, Appian Portal, and Appian RPA."
"What I found most valuable in Appian is that it lets you drill down on multiple things through the structure of the reporting and UI side. It's also low-code, yet it results in quick deliverables."
"The tech support is quite good."
"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."
"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."
"A user interface is relatively simple to create."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to build very fast data-driven UIs."
"Efficient software delivery and a solution that works quickly."
"Oracle APEX allows our company to complete webpage projects easily in a fast turnaround time."
"Oracle APEX improved our organization by making it possible for us to implement agile project development."
"Oracle APEX is very easy to use and comes with a lot of ready-made components that speed up the process of creating reports and dashboards."
 

Cons

"The reporting is not as good as in similar products. They could also improve the dashboards."
"There could be a scope of enhancement for capturing the variety of use cases."
"It would be nice if you could create your own customized apps when the business needed them.​"
"There are four areas I believe Appian could improve in. The first is a seamless contact center integration. Appian does not have a contact center feature. The second is advanced features in RPA. The third would be chatbot and email bot integration—while Appian comes with chatbot and email bot, it's not as mature as it should be, compared to the competition. The fourth area would be next best action, since there is not much of this sort of feature in Appian. These are all features which competitors' products have, and in a mature manner, whereas Appian lacks on these four areas. I see customers who are moving from Appian to Pega because these features are not in Appian."
"The documentation needs to be improved."
"It is difficult to set up the on-premise version."
"Even though the company has made great improvements in online documentation, featuring rich material which includes case studies of real-life use cases, the material could definitely be better in quality and coverage of use cases."
"If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory."
"Another issue I used to encounter was with the debugging functions. I believe this is an area where Oracle APEX could improve significantly in terms of displaying error messages or error pages. It is very difficult to detect bugs or which bugs you are having when it comes to errors or which errors you have."
"Maybe there are other technologies that offer what APEX cannot."
"The user interface needs to be improved. It should be more user-friendly."
"Occasionally when trying to un a page, I would be faced with an error number; however, not much information would be provided on the error itself outside of the programming language. It would be nice if more information could be provided."
"It can only be deployed on Oracle Database."
"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."
"During the upcoming versions, we can modify the current configuration."
"The grid reports contain a lot of bugs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're doing an enterprise-wide digital transformation, Appian is worthwhile, but not for just one or two use cases because the license costs are higher."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"The price of this solution is a little high here in Mongolia."
"I think that if somebody is really serious at looking at business value, then by all means, the product is well worth the value. You get representative business value for the price that you pay for the product, and for the implementation of the product."
"The price of the solution is reasonable and is paid annually. The price of the solution depends on how many users use the solution. It can range from $50,000 to $200,000. For example, for 20,000 users the price can be approximately $200,000."
"It is fully managed, and I don't believe there are any additional expenses."
"The pricing can be a little confusing to customers."
"Product pricing compared to some of the earlier vendors, like IBM, CA, and Oracle, is quite well-priced. Although, we do feel that as we increase the number of users and the workload increases, we will have to spend more."
"Oracle Application Express (APEX) comes with Oracle. The Oracle price itself. I do not know the exact cost. Oracle is flexible on its price. If you overspend on your hardware, then I don't think you will overpay. I heard that Oracle is more expensive than other databases, but when you consider Oracle is the best traditional relational database out there. You get what you pay for."
"The product is completely free of cost."
"The pricing is mid-range so is neither expensive nor cheap."
"We have a full Oracle E-Business Suite license, and we use that license to develop applications. There's no license required for developing Oracle applications."
"The solution is cheap. It's a free solution. I rate the solution's pricing a six or seven out of ten."
"There is a trial version available that can be used free of charge."
"The solution is free."
"I believe APEX comes bundled with the database, including autonomous database and other related database products, so the pricing is quite reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...
Is Appian a suitable solution for beginners who have no additional preparation?
Appian is actually pretty big on educating its users, including with courses that reward you with certifications. There is a whole section on their company’s website where you can check out the edu...
Is it easy to set up Appian or did you have to resort to professional help?
We had some issues when we were setting up Appian. It was quite surprising, since this is a low-code tool which, in its essence, means it is meant for business users and inexperienced beginners. So...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Application Express (APEX)?
I consider Oracle Application Express (APEX) to be good value for the money because it has infinite quality for money since it's included in any Oracle database license. It's free once you have the...
What needs improvement with Oracle Application Express (APEX)?
One of the things that could be done to improve Oracle Application Express (APEX) is if Oracle decided to open it up to other databases. It needs to be an enterprise database; therefore, it needs t...
 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Oracle APEX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee
Hepart AG, pharmasol, SATLOG, Collège Bois-de-Boulogne
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. Oracle Application Express (APEX) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.