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IBM API Connect vs Workato 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
4.2
Workato improved integration and efficiency, leading to cost savings and allowing focus on growth and product development.
Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.
By replacing multiple legacy systems and teams with a single automated platform, organizations see significant cost savings and improved business operations.
For main recipes, there are charges, so by focusing on creating as many callable recipes as possible based on requirements, we can improve cost efficiency for the business.
In my experience, we have seen a return on investment, with results visible within a week.
 

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
6.2
Workato's customer service is praised for responsiveness, though some report 24/7 availability issues and technical limitations.
Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.
Whenever we faced issues with data volume, the support team helped us by suggesting solutions like breaking the data into chunks.
I reach out to the professional services team or customer success team for technical support, and they provide immediate responses.
Workato's support is robust, featuring first and second-level support.
 

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
5.9
Workato is scalable, handling diverse tasks well, but faces challenges with data spikes and complex scaling in high workloads.
With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.
There are scalability limitations with Workato.
Allows dynamic connection switching at runtime.
Even when clients overutilize the product, Workato allows them to continue without interruption, charging accordingly rather than limiting usage.
 

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
6.6
Workato is stable daily, but stability varies under high load, with occasional connector issues and data file limitations.
The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.
Once deployed, solutions do not break, making it more reliable than other solutions like Microsoft Power Automate that often disconnect.
During the initial data loads with large volumes, Workato was unable to handle the data effectively, which indicates stability issues under high loads.
To handle more than 50,000 records, I use scripting actions like Python or JavaScript to process large data in chunks.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.
Workato must improve in scalability, flexibility, global reach, integration, and AI, while enhancing collaboration and customization features.
Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.
The team is actively working on customizing the platform per client requirements and is rapidly releasing features to address these limitations.
Workato struggles with scalability when handling high volumes of data, such as terabytes, requiring chunking for initial data loads.
One area for improvement is the CI/CD pipeline, which lacks a version control system similar to GitHub for easier deployment.
 

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.
Workato offers competitive and flexible pricing, appealing to small to medium enterprises, with costs varying by usage and features.
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.
Higher volume is less expensive, but in general, it is kind of pricey.
While the upfront cost is high due to task-based pricing, the cost is relatively low in terms of development because Workato provides necessary connectors for integration use cases.
Compared to other iPaaS solutions like Boomi, Workato’s pricing model charges per connection step, which increases the cost.
 

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.
Workato excels in ease of use, rapid integration, low-code automation, and efficiency, offering quick onboarding and robust documentation.
It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.
It allows app-to-app and real-time integrations, which significantly enhance process efficiency.
It comes with pre-built connectors, eliminating the need to write APIs.
The platform's ease of use for connecting to different integrations, like Salesforce and NetSuite, is very beneficial because development isn't necessary, and everything is readily available.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
API Management (8th)
Workato
Ranking in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 2.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workato is 5.3%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Workato5.3%
IBM API Connect2.7%
Other92.0%
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.
Isaac Viana - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration support simplifies automation and reduces errors without existing frustrations
In Workato, I can see everything that goes behind the process. You can see how everything works, how the tool works in the background. If something goes bad and an error appears, I can see why it happened. The best features Workato offers, in my opinion, are the easy integration with many different types of tools. The Workato interface is so easy to use. Workato has impacted my organization positively by reducing errors, which is one of the most important improvements I can see, and one great thing is that in Workato I can do many things that the main BPA platform we use does not do. Error reduction has helped our team in Workato as we can see more details about the most common errors and what makes everything go bad. With this specific data, we can develop a new and better solution. Workato helped us to do this. We can see more details about the errors and solve them. Workato has improved a lot of my work because there I can develop many flows easier and faster. At this moment, I do not have anything that frustrates me.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise7
 

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 needs improvement with Workato?
While there are still a few areas where Workato has room for improvement, they’re making impressive strides in advancing their AI capabilities and enhancing their RPA features. Their recent confere...
What is your primary use case for Workato?
We use Workato for our G&A across finance, accounting, procurement, audit and compliance, HR, GTM which covers sales, marketing, customer success, as well as IT. Wherever we need process automa...
What advice do you have for others considering Workato?
I have experience in the automation space for more than 18 years, and I have worked on multiple integration platforms including JCAPS, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Service Bus, BPM, MuleSoft, Boomi, an...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Panera Bread, Berkshire Hathaway, Salesforce, Box, Splunk, ComScore, IBM, Complex Media, Microsoft, Home Depot, Cisco, News Corp, Braille Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. Workato and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.