Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM API Connect vs MuleSoft Composer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
IBM API Connect enhances profitability and efficiency by reducing development time, improving security, and enabling seamless system integration.
Sentiment score
7.6
MuleSoft Composer enhances efficiency, reduces costs, improves time-to-market, and increases value with easy integration and better data accuracy.
Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM API Connect support is proactive and expert but variable in speed, with regional availability challenges noted by users.
Sentiment score
7.3
Users commend MuleSoft Composer's responsive and professional customer service team for efficient problem-solving and quick resolution times.
Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM API Connect offers excellent scalability through on-premise and cloud solutions, supporting enterprise-level operations and customization features.
Sentiment score
7.0
MuleSoft Composer is highly rated for scalability, efficiently managing varying data volumes and adaptable for organizations of all sizes.
With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
IBM API Connect is generally stable and reliable, especially in government and banking, despite occasional upgrade issues.
Sentiment score
7.0
Users find MuleSoft Composer stable and well-performing, despite occasional glitches quickly resolved by support.
The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.
MuleSoft Composer needs better platform integrations, interface, scalability, AI integration, and support for complex data and API sharing challenges.
Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.
 

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.
MuleSoft Composer is considered costly, especially in Brazil and India, with users recommending a 20%-30% price reduction.
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.
 

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.
MuleSoft Composer offers Salesforce integration, ease of use, API sharing, prebuilt connectors, and effective data handling, monitoring, and notifications.
It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
API Management (4th)
MuleSoft Composer
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (25th), Cloud Data Integration (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 2.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft Composer is 2.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
 

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.
Prince Barai - PeerSpot reviewer
The prebuilt connectors save a lot of time and money, but the customer support and price must be improved
Our customer’s system is very old. We are trying to upgrade it. We are extracting data from the system and sending it to Salesforce. The product is a good option if we want to build process automation for data. It can be done quickly through the tool. We need not do coding and waste our time and efforts. The ease of learning depends on the person who is learning the product. It depends on whether they come from a developer background. It would be easy to learn if they have some experience in coding and have worked on integrations. I haven’t faced many challenges while scaling our integration solutions with MuleSoft Composer. The drag-and-drop interface has not impacted our project deployment time much. The customer support and price can be improved. Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
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 products, the licensing is not significantly higher.
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. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ ( /categories/message-queue-mq...
What do you like most about MuleSoft Composer?
The way Composer organizes and manages integration processes is most beneficial. We can easily monitor what's running and what isn't and troubleshoot any data integration issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MuleSoft Composer?
It's costly, especially for Indian clients. Reducing the price would help them penetrate the Indian market. A two-year license costs around seventy lakhs rupees. It's a considerable amount.
What needs improvement with MuleSoft Composer?
Configuration could be easier, but we were able to handle it. It seems that juniors find it challenging, but seniors like me know how to configure it properly. There are no issues. There is also on...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. MuleSoft Composer and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.