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IBM API Connect vs SwaggerHub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (7th)
SwaggerHub
Ranking in API Management
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwaggerHub is 1.4%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan - PeerSpot reviewer
Quite flexible and provides excellent performance for API gateway
The only disadvantage I can see is that it requires heavy hardware support, which can be considered quite expensive. In terms of new functionality, I think the analytics can be improved in V10. The analytics feature was better in the older version, 2.18. But in V10, it's not as flexible. When exporting analytics as KSP or JSON, it's not well formatted. They can work on enhancing the analytics part. Additionally, they can focus on reducing the hardware cost.
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

"IBM API Connect is a reliable and scalable solution."
"It acts as a central gateway for both external APIs and underlying systems. It's basically a central middleware for hosting APIs to the internet and consuming APIs from internal systems. It provides central governance for any APIs going outside the network, ensuring security and a common contract for API definitions."
"What's best about IBM API Connect is the excellent administration. The development tool that builds the API is also very simple, and user-friendly, and it doesn't consume too much time. Another valuable feature in IBM API Connect is its good reporting feature, particularly for operations, but the most valuable feature of the solution for the customer is security. IBM API Connect provides a DMZ and a security gateway between the external and internal environment, so you can publish your API safely. IBM API Connect can also integrate with any tool or middleware that works on open standards without the need for development or coding, so integration with the solution is easier."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The interface is very nice. It makes the solution easy to use and navigate."
"IBM API Connect is a good product, and their technical support is excellent."
"Policy configurations are pretty easy."
"We really like the runtime capabilities of IBM API Connect. The creation of products and the control of the monetization and hit rate are some of the features which we've found very valuable."
"You can click & play and add the notation in a human-readable form. Spotlight is also very good in the graphical design of APIs."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."
"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."
"The tool's most valuable feature is licensing."
"The most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement regarding the connectivity of the DevOps."
"Understanding the architecture, deployment criteria, and communication methods of the installation can be time-consuming."
"The solution is not scalable."
"It should be cheaper."
"There are some performance issues and issues related to asynchronous APIs."
"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."
"Support for this platform could still be improved. It also needs to have more levels of versatility. Its compatibility and integration with different platforms also need improvement."
"Business applications could be exposed to users."
"It could be more intuitive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."
"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."
"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."
"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"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."
"The pricing is significantly high."
"It can be quite expensive. It's okay for large-scale usage but quite expensive for smaller-scale implementations."
"We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee."
"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."
"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."
"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."
"The tool is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
7%
Government
6%
 

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?
Price depends on many factors like size of the deal, competitive factors, timing, customer profile or where the pricing for API Calls is very competitive comparing to any of the leader players.
What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?
The only downside where improvements are needed is probably on the licensing side. Scalability is an issue with IBM API Connect, making it an area where improvements are required.
What do you like most about SwaggerHub?
The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.
What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?
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....
What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?
I started using SwaggerHub in its previous version, SmartMiner, with a tool called SoapUI. I used it to create mock web services to test web services and create test scripts and mock APIs. This usa...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. SwaggerHub and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.