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IBM API Connect vs TIBCO Cloud API Management 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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)
TIBCO Cloud API Management
Ranking in API Management
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.1%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Cloud API Management is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM API Connect6.1%
TIBCO Cloud API Management1.0%
Other92.9%
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.
AftabAlam - PeerSpot reviewer
Trust and reliability have been established with long-term usage and significant integration benefits
TIBCO Cloud API Management offers API management plus the ability to orchestrate all inbound and outbound API calls. When an API is exposed to the external system, it functions as a single integration. Behind the scenes, you can perform extensive API modeling, aggregation, and downstream systems can have more than one API and give the response back to a single API call. It has many features such as orchestration rule engine, which makes it quite good. TIBCO Cloud API Management has brought numerous benefits for our organization, especially in product maturity and support. Sales and support are strong areas, and I think it is very good. If they do not get the right support, then they should consider other options. The sales and support also provides cost optimization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Easy to configure security and generate API keys."
"Policy configurations are pretty easy."
"One of the most valuable features is that we can seamlessly and harmoniously expose our capabilities, from a security point of view."
"The product gathers data to measure API performance."
"It gives a holistic environment for us to set up the APIs and that's the main value that it adds. It gives end to end for us."
"The solution offers a pretty good SLA."
"The most valuable feature is the security we get from this solution. I know of a bank that uses it to ensure that everything is secure. The second feature I like is the retail environment, where we actually want to be able to provide as many suppliers and consumers with APIs as possible. If you are well-trained in the writing of RESTful API's, you can actually publish an API in a matter of minutes, test it, and publish it."
"Very few outages or SLA issues."
"The solution is a good general API manager. They have a few propriety features but are offering items that are standard in the industry as well."
"This has provided a new stream of traffic and exposure of our catalogue beyond the normal web store offering."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management has brought numerous benefits for our organization, especially in product maturity and support."
"It is easy to work with ."
"The reason why we selected the solution originally was because of its ability to have a gateway both on-premise and in the cloud. This is the most valuable aspect of the solution for us."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to have different packages based on the API keys. The same core system can have different packages based on different environments."
"The most valuable aspect of Mashery is its stability."
 

Cons

"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."
"IBM info-center help documentation also needs improvement. Competitive product like Apigee provide out of the box policies to run Javascript, JAVA and better/flexible logging policies."
"Automation for our Domino applications could be improved."
"The installation was difficult with the IBM toolkit."
"Due to bugs in integration, we have to look for workaround on fixing and using DataPower as gateway."
"The automation and the simplicity could be improved."
"We ran it on top of the Kubernetes cluster, so it wasn't a standalone service. In the worst-case scenario, API Connect couldn't stay online if all the containers went down. We had to restart all the services. We shut down all the containers automatically one by one."
"The developer portal could be easier to customize."
"I'd like to see TIBCO integrate authentication and security features into Mashery."
"We observed delays under heavy load conditions, and without proper tuning, changes could take an extended period to filter and become effective."
"It's not that user-friendly, and security-wise when you try to implement the security layer on top of it, it's not that easy either."
"The security needs improvement, specifically, propagation of security to an API. Calling other APIs is something that is missing in the product and that makes us think about going to a competitor."
"There are some areas for improvement in TIBCO Cloud API Management, especially regarding network protocols such as SMPP, SMTP, GVI, SVI, and Diameter which could show performance issues in terms of handling and connection management pooling efficiency."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management should improve its installation and make it easy."
"Monetization is not that great in API management. You need customization. Improvements are needed with sandbox local as well as with monetization. Those features are missing."
"The way agile life cycle is working needs improvement. I also want to see more support for open API standards. I want to see some improvement on the protocol transformation. That is quite missing now. These are the three main issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There was a need to purchase an upfront license or a one-time license or upfront license, but I cannot remember the details about it clearly."
"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."
"The pricing is too expensive with IBM. Sometimes, we prefer to go with an open source or something more lightweight."
"It's an expensive product."
"Pricing for IBM API Connect varies, e.g. it could be subscription-based. Deploying it on private cloud also means you have to own most of the software licensing."
"The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away."
"IBM API Connect could be cheaper."
"The pricing is significantly high."
"We have secured terms on which we have been happy to renew for a number of years."
"TIBCO Cloud API Management is not an expensive solution."
"Licensing is quite flexible."
"Its price is pretty reasonable. There are some lightweight API options available in the market, but given the feature set that TIBCO provides, its price is really reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise58
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
 

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 TIBCO Cloud API Management?
The platform's most valuable features are its capabilities to support security measures such as tokenization, token refresh, throttling, and enforcement of payloads.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Cloud API Management?
My primary role was to assess the solution from a capability perspective. So, there are some issues with the licensing cost.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Cloud API Management?
There are some areas for improvement in TIBCO Cloud API Management, especially regarding network protocols such as SMPP, SMTP, GVI, SVI, and Diameter which could show performance issues in terms of...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Mashery API Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
uShip, Sabre, TouchTunes, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, athenahealth, Coca-Cola Enterprises, CentralIndex.com, Constant Contact, Edmunds.com, FoodEssentials, Getty Images, Klout, Rovi, Rotten Tomatoes, Sportradar, TomTom, ACTIVE.com
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. TIBCO Cloud API Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.