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IBM API Connect vs MuleSoft API Manager 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 October 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.0%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft API Manager is 5.0%, down from 5.7% 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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
MuleSoft API Manager5.0%
IBM API Connect6.0%
SwaggerHub1.4%
Other87.6%
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.
D.Rajesh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved Integration Efficiency and Potential for Further Enhancements in Monitoring and User Experience
The policies in MuleSoft API Manager are significant features. We get the policies by default, with more than 25 out-of-the-box policies. If any additional requirement exists specific to the customer, there is a custom policy framework. We can build the policy according to our requirement, and deploy and enable it at the API Manager level to consume across different business groups, environments, or organizations altogether within the platform. Developing the custom policy is not challenging; you just need to follow the custom policy framework to implement. The custom policy and the different levels of SLAs of the API Manager are notable. Regarding the monitoring side of the API Manager, MuleSoft provides substantial monitoring with logs, offering search capability, raw data accessibility, and different subscriptions. With the top tier, integration with third-party platforms such as ELK or Splunk becomes unnecessary because all search capabilities, dashboards, and functional monitoring can be built within the platform itself. This is excellent from the monitoring perspective, and there have been recent improvements focusing on observability. For DevOps, if you want to make your continuous integration and continuous deployment effective, irrespective of the tool, there are options to integrate. For example, you can use the Maven plugin, platform APIs, or CLI to build your end-to-end DevOps cycle.
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

"API Connect is a very good platform for the development of APIs."
"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."
"DataPower Gateway holds significant value for us as it serves as the cornerstone of our enterprise security controls."
"The capabilities are very good."
"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."
"Its speed and performance are valuable."
"One of the most valuable features is the easy-to-use web interface."
"Scalable and stable API platform for creating and managing APIs."
"Both the cloud and on-premises options are available. Customers can leverage the MuleSoft Cloud platform to deploy the applications or set up their own online infrastructure to deploy applications."
"Offers good integration and flexibility."
"It provides various advantages in the integration field, including support for Azure services and cloud integrations."
"It can create high-cost solutions, allowing for a great deal of customization to make it well-suited for specific needs."
"Technical support has been helpful."
"We have all the policies available via drag and drop. It made it very easy."
"Overall, the platform is pretty good, I cannot say which one specific feature is good. The idea of an API manager is really interesting."
"Leveraging MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform allows us to seamlessly integrate across different systems within enterprises, enabling customers to extend their products and services to the market with seamless channel integration."
"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."
"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 scalability is endless."
"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."
"SwaggerHub has significantly improved how my organization designs, documents, and manages APIs, centralizing API management so that all API definitions are stored in one location, which makes it easy for stakeholders, developers, QA, DevOps, and products to access the latest version."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."
"SwaggerHub plays a crucial role in order to bring teams and automate things faster and also reduce the man-hours and increase the work efficiency."
 

Cons

"The solution is not scalable."
"Business applications could be exposed to users."
"The implementation process could benefit from improvements, as it may take some time to become accustomed to the deployment."
"We have asked IBM for scalability and for some other features that we wanted. We had a dialogue with them and in the end, they have agreed to provide us with features related to API setup and security."
"In terms of what needs improvement, some of the product documentation could be better."
"Understanding the architecture, deployment criteria, and communication methods of the installation can be time-consuming."
"I would like to see support for non-Java based services. We struggle a bit to be able to deploy and connect our .NET services because of things like data types. We had to map a couple of things. For one solution provider, we had to move them to .NET Core before we could use it properly. I would like to see more agnostic tool service platforms rather than moving it more towards Java or open source."
"The platform’s integration with the payment gateway needs enhancement. The setup process and support services could be improved."
"The solution is expensive."
"Anypoint could be improved by making it more open and configurable for small companies, who tend not to consider the solution as it's expensive and requires a lot of costs upfront."
"Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager can improve some of the gateway features. We could use some more customization in creating rules. A lot of the policies are related to the APIs rather than the client. If I want to apply a policy based on a client that is not available."
"Rather than focusing on numbers, they should focus more on the customer support service."
"Better documentation to help explain each of the features would be really helpful."
"The cost for using MuleSoft is approximately $500,000 USD per year. It includes various subscriptions like the signature success plan and platinum subscriptions, making it a costly infrastructure."
"Since most components are situated in the cloud, there's one particular hosted in the cloud. This presents a considerable challenge. While all other components are implemented on-premises, this specific one isn't permitted to be hosted in the cloud as per customer requirements. Shifting this component to an on-premises environment requires a significant effort."
"To improve Anypoint API Manager for the next release, it should focus on better consumption scalability, especially for smaller APIs."
"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."
"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"
"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."
"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."
"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."
"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."
"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."
"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."
"It is expensive when compared to other products in this class. There were no extra fees for add-ons or technical support."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"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."
"It can be quite expensive. It's okay for large-scale usage but quite expensive for smaller-scale implementations."
"API Connect is quite pricey."
"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."
"Anypoint is the most expensive solution on the market, as far as I know, though it's also the most capable."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as six and a half to seven."
"The pricing is very expensive, although you get a lot of power from the product."
"The product is highly priced compared to other advanced software. It is affordable only for tier-one customers."
"The pricing for this solution is cheaper than GCP and Bluemix."
"Our customers have a lot of concerns about the increased pricing. The customer feels MuleSoft is very costly, and they are also exploring other integration tools for a lesser price. Maybe we should retain the existing customers by offering some discounts. At least the existing customers can be retained this way. This is regarding the licensing part only because customers based out of North America and Europe have shown many concerns recently. They are a bit concerned about pricing."
"The price of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is very high."
"The product's main drawback is its cost. It's expensive for our company, and their recent change in pricing strategy last year complicated things further. That's the only thing we're not happy with."
"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."
"The tool is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise59
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise8
 

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 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...
How does Kong Enterprise compare with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager was designed with its users in mind. Though it is a reasonably complex piece of sof...
How does Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy...
What do you like most about Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy po...
What do you like most about SwaggerHub?
The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.
What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?
In SwaggerHub, I appreciate that it is a powerful platform for API design and collaboration, but currently, the acces...
What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?
I have worked for Arden University, University of Sheffield, and Nanyang Technological University. For those institut...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Anypoint API Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Coca-Cola, Splunk, Citrix, UCSF, Vertu, State of Colorado, National Post, TiVo, Deakin, LLS, Oldcastle Precast, ParcelPoint, Justice Systems, Ube, Sumitomo Corporation, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Groupe Initiatives, Camelot, Panviva
Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in API Management. Updated: October 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.