IBM API Connect vs OpenLegacy comparison

IBM and OpenLegacy are both solutions in the API Management category. IBM is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.5, while OpenLegacy is ranked #36. IBM holds a 6.4% mindshare in APIM, compared to OpenLegacy’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of OpenLegacy users who would recommend it.

IBM API Connect

Read 76 IBM API Connect reviews

8,187 Views
4,398 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

OpenLegacy

Read 5 OpenLegacy reviews

440 Views
229 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

IBM API Connect

OpenLegacy

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM API Connect and OpenLegacy are competing products in the API management category. IBM API Connect appears to have the upper hand with its extensive features and integration capabilities tailored for enterprise environments, while OpenLegacy's modern technology and quick deployment options make it an appealing choice for businesses seeking agility and cost savings.

Features: IBM API Connect offers extensive API lifecycle management, robust security, and in-depth analytics, making it suitable for large enterprises needing comprehensive control and insights. OpenLegacy excels in rapid legacy system integration and microservice generation, which is ideal for organizations focused on modernization and operational streamlining.

Room for Improvement: IBM API Connect could improve its deployment process, which tends to be complex due to its wide range of capabilities, potentially extending initial setup time. Documentation could be more user-friendly to facilitate quicker installations. It would also benefit from enhancing its microservice support further. OpenLegacy can improve upon scalability for very large enterprise demands, expand its analytics capabilities to match those of its larger competitors, and increase its cloud integration features for hybrid environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenLegacy provides a straightforward deployment model, minimizing time-to-market with streamlined processes suitable for legacy systems, and it focuses on responsive customer service. IBM API Connect offers comprehensive support and documentation but tends to require more setup time due to its extensive capabilities, which can be intricate for users unfamiliar with its system.

Pricing and ROI: IBM API Connect has a perceived higher setup cost; however, it promises a strong ROI for enterprises that can fully leverage its extensive range of features over time. OpenLegacy presents a cost-effective solution with fast ROI, especially attractive to businesses aiming to reduce costs while modernizing efficiently without significant initial investments.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM API Connect vs. OpenLegacy Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. OpenLegacy

June 2025

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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

IBM API Connect

Ranking in API Management

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

OpenLegacy

Ranking in API Management

36th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenLegacy is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan

Solutions Architect at Synechron

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.

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reviewer1042905

VP, Chief Enterprise Integration Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The biggest advantage is how simple the technology was.

I'd like to see OpenLegacy develop its low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions. They've expanded somewhat their horizons for integration beyond mainframe CICS, which is their sweet spot. They have some tooling in that area, but it's not as good as it needs to be. OpenLegacy handles the bread-and-butter TP monitoring stuff, but I am working for one of the six banks in the United States still using the Hogan mainframe, which has a slightly proprietary mechanism. But OpenLegacy currently doesn't have a connector for Hogan. So it would help if they could build one. That would appeal to financial institutions that still use Hogan, like US Bank, Wells Fargo, KeyBank, and Vanguard.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"The statistics component is easy to use."

"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."

"The solution is very stable."

"The services that I consume through IBM API Connect are beneficial. It can handle multiple API management."

"One of the most valuable features is that we can seamlessly and harmoniously expose our capabilities, from a security point of view."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"In-built policies and security functions."

More IBM API Connect pros

"Opens the door to connect modern web products to an old legacy system."

"Using mainframe programs (not screens), the OpenLegacy services do not require any changes by the mainframe programmers, thus reducing development cycles."

"It is possible to connect a service to a mainframe program or back transaction in a matter of minutes or hours at the most."

"OpenLegacy provides a way to go from the outside world to the legacy mainframe, to move the old standard application to a REST API application. New digital services can be created in a few clicks and this can be done easily by COBOL programmers."

"Using OpenLegacy, the exposure of services is far easier and quicker. In many cases, exposure of services requires just a few clicks and takes only minutes. In very complex cases, it still only takes half a day. Without OpenLegacy, it would take us several months to create the same services."

"The biggest advantage of OpenLegacy was how simple the technology was. We were able to build out the OpenLegacy parts very quickly. We put together a couple hundred APIs in six months."

"It is possible to solve larger legacy API issues on an enterprise level with this product."

"OpenLegacy produces a war file which includes everything you need to deploy a Tomcat server."

Cons

"It is expensive within this class of products."

"The monetization of the API could be improved. The pricing for the consumer is also very important to improve this solution."

"It would be nice to have a SaaS solution that can be deployed into the cloud."

"The integration of an API gateway that implements the sidecar pattern, which can be deployed in cloud applications, and expose the microservices directly in each pod, this can be more decentralized components."

"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."

"The design time setup has a lot of customizable fields, but we need certain standard fields to be added, such as what all of the consuming systems are. This needs to be very clearly articulated during the design time."

"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."

More IBM API Connect cons

"I would like to see SSL out-of-the-box. OpenLegacy certainly does SSL, but it was not the default for our use case. We are currently working with OpenLegacy to cross the SSL bridge and suspect that most users will want to do the same."

"We would also be more than happy if the product had the option to work in the opposite direction – the ability to consume REST/SOW services in the outer world from the mainframe."

"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible and allow for once-off payment versus annual licensing. This would be more appealing to companies in Latin America."

"I'd like to see OpenLegacy develop its low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions. They've expanded somewhat their horizons for integration beyond mainframe CICS, which is their sweet spot. They have some tooling in that area, but it's not as good as it needs to be."

"Customer support for the product is slow and not very good. It makes using the product difficult if you need help quickly."

"Debugging and logging for programmers could be better."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a licensed product. If your company is looking to obtain a license, you have to work with IBM partners."

"It's an expensive product."

"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."

"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 a pretty expensive tool."

"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."

"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."

"We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee."

More IBM API Connect pricing and cost advice

"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible and allow for once-off payment versus annual licensing. This would be more appealing to companies in Latin America."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Insurance Company

10%

Computer Software Company

No data available

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 25% of the time

Apigee vs IBM API Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM API Connect

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 7% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM API Connect Competitors

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs OpenLegacy

Compared 30% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs OpenLegacy

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs OpenLegacy

Compared 13% of the time

webMethods.io vs OpenLegacy

Compared 12% of the time

SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite vs OpenLegacy

Compared 10% of the time

More OpenLegacy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect

June 2025

Download IBM API Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

OpenLegacy

May 2025

Download OpenLegacy product report

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.

IBM

OpenLegacy helps organizations quickly launch innovative digital services by extending their core back-end systems to the web, mobile and cloud in days or weeks versus months. Our microservice-enabled API integration and management software quickly reduces project backlog by automating and accelerating microservices and API creation, deployment, testing and management from core applications, mainframes and databases. Together, business and IT teams can quickly, easily and securely meet consumer, partner or employee demands for digital services without modernizing or replacing core systems, and without special programming skills or invasive changes to existing systems and architectures. OpenLegacy is designed for ongoing management of microservices APIs and is based on open standards, so our software plays nice with your current technology stack and supports agile, DevOps and continuous development. Learn why leading companies choose OpenLegacy at www.openlegacy.com.

OpenLegacy

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

Many of openLegacy's global customers are among the Global 100 companies. Review case studies in these industries: Agriculture, Airport Authority, Automotive, Auto, Finance, Insurance, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retailwww.openlegacy.com/case-studie...

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. OpenLegacy

June 2025

Free Report: IBM API Connect vs. OpenLegacy

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