IBM API Connect vs Postman comparison

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IBM API Connect

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM API Connect and Postman compete in the API management and testing category. Postman appears to have the advantage for simplicity and cost-effectiveness, particularly beneficial for developers, while IBM API Connect is preferred for its robust security and enterprise-level management capabilities.

Features:IBM API Connect provides comprehensive security gateway capabilities with features like OAuth support, advanced analytics, and integration with DataPower. It supports API management across different company verticals and a multi-version environment. Postman is recognized for its ease of use, offering a versatile environment for API testing and development with variables, collection sharing, and automation possibilities.

Room for Improvement:IBM API Connect users note integration complexities with DataPower and express a desire for improved monitoring tools and developer portal customization. Postman could enhance its database connectivity, improve SOAP API testing, and streamline management of multiple collections, alongside more integrations and better documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:IBM API Connect offers deployment models for on-premises, private cloud, and hybrid cloud environments, mainly targeting enterprises. Experiences with technical support vary. Postman, available on public and private clouds, is easy to set up and use, often requiring minimal technical support due to its open-source nature.

Pricing and ROI:IBM API Connect is considered expensive, typically priced on a subscription or per-user basis, limiting it to larger enterprises despite favorable ROI from system integration. In contrast, Postman offers a free version and low-cost premium plans, positioning itself as a cost-effective solution for API development and testing, especially for individuals and smaller teams.

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

IBM API Connect vs. Postman

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:

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

8.2

Postman's streamlined API workflows enhance collaboration, reduce manual testing time, minimize errors, and improve productivity, leading to cost savings.

Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

A minimum of 50% time is saved when comparing manual to automation.

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Senior QA Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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

6.6

Most users rely on Postman's documentation and community forums, reducing the need for direct technical support.

Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

I appreciate the ease of using Postman, especially its desktop version, due to the features it offers such as cookie management and environment synchronization.

Senior developer at Digital world advisory

There is a lot of support available through forums and user groups, which has been sufficient for me.

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Automation Architect at Cognizant

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

7.2

Postman is scalable for diverse teams, but performance issues and lacking features affect heavy use and expanded scalability.

With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

Postman does not have database validation available, which affects its scalability.

Automation Architect at Cognizant

This solution is scalable.

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Product Development Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

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

8.0

Postman is rated highly for stability, with occasional latency or issues mainly related to large APIs and connection challenges.

The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

I rate it ten out of ten for stability.

Product Development Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

I have not experienced any issues or downtimes.

MOHAMED RAMIGARALI

Full Stack JS(ReactJS/NodeJS) & IBM Integration Bus(IIB) Developer at Eviden France

The tool is generally stable.

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Senior developer at Digital world advisory

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.

Postman needs better integrations, UI simplification, enhanced automation, data-driven testing, improved reporting, authentication, and database connectivity.

Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

This feature would allow the response to be validated in the database as well.

Automation Architect at Cognizant

One of the primary challenges with Postman is handling authentication issues, especially relating to tokens and passwords.

Senior developer at Digital world advisory

Maybe Postman can be a good contender and replicate some features such as more scripting and control over API calls.

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Senior QA Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.

Postman's free and reasonably priced enterprise versions with diverse licensing options cater to various user needs and preferences.

Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

Postman is open-source, so the cost is minimal compared to commercial platforms.

Automation Architect at Cognizant

Postman is much cheaper than the other tools.

Senior QA Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Postman's pricing model includes a basic free version, which is favorable given the Professional enterprise options offered.

For more quotes and insights, download the Postman report

Senior developer at Digital world advisory

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.

Postman offers a user-friendly interface, collaboration features, and supports API testing with automation, validation, and cloud accessibility.

It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

It has helped significantly since it is easy; the development team and QA team all use it, enabling us to automate almost 70% of our APIs using Postman.

Senior QA Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The desktop version's features like cookie management, environment compatibility, security settings, proxy integration, and data synchronization add significant value.

Senior developer at Digital world advisory

It is easy to install, as well as to learn, particularly for new users, even if they are not developers.

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Product Development Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

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)

Postman

Ranking in API Management

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

API Monitoring Software (1st), API Testing Tools (3rd)

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 Postman is 0.8%, up from 0.4% 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.

Read full review

Solution simplifies web service testing with impressive speed and accessibility

Product Development Manager at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

It is very easy for me to use and I highly prefer it compared to SoapUI and other products for performing its job. It is more handy and faster. It has impacted us very nicely. Postman is used for free by us. I'm not sure if there might be a paid version for multiple users. It is a very good product used for development. It is easy to install, as well as to learn, particularly for new users, even if they are not developers. I taught my business analyst to use it. I just showed them once, and it was easy for them to understand. For example, I gave them the URL and request format and asked them to test independently. They were able to use it on their own and do their testing as well. It was a good experience, especially for generally smart people, like those we usually hire in our company. It is pretty easy to explain, and learning it is not complex.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

16%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

How does Postman compare with Apache JMeter?

Postman lets you easily define variables, which then get updated automatically. This is a huge time-saver and makes processes very efficient. We can also export the test cases we create and share t...

What do you like most about Postman?

The product is easy to implement.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Postman?

Postman is much cheaper than the other tools. I am not aware of the current pricing for Postman because that's taken care of by the client; we just pay and they simply create options. On a per-pers...

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM API Connect

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Product Reports

Download IBM API Connect product report

IBM API Connect

June 2025

Download Postman product report

May 2025

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

Postman's Tools Support Every Stage of the API Lifecycle. Through design, testing and full production, Postman is there for faster, easier API development - without the chaos.

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

PayPal, Shopify, Microsoft, Adobe, Atlassian, Twitter, BestBuy, Coursera