Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM API Connect vs WSO2 API Manager 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:
 

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
7.6
WSO2 API Manager offers high ROI with cost efficiency, operational improvements, and valuable support, though perceptions may vary.
Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.
 

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
Customer service varies with subscription level, with helpful responses often, while open-source users rely on forums and documentation.
Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.
The support is good, with well-defined documentation and helpful blogs.
 

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
7.5
WSO2 API Manager is scalable, supporting container deployments, horizontal and vertical scaling, but involves manual provisioning challenges.
With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.
 

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
7.3
WSO2 API Manager is stable with minor issues, quick bug fixes, and high ratings, benefiting from Tomcat's foundation.
The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.
The system is stable for our low-concurrency use cases.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.
WSO2 API Manager requires UI improvements, better documentation, competitive pricing, enhanced support, and solutions for stability, performance, and integration issues.
Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.
Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions.
 

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.
WSO2 API Manager offers an open-source version and a subscription model, with costs varying based on features and usage.
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.
 

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.
WSO2 API Manager provides robust security, flexibility, scalability, and powerful integration with user-friendly features for seamless API management.
It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.
The product's capabilities for integrating with REST APIs are valuable.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
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 WSO2 API Manager is 4.9%, up from 4.1% 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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration
I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.
851,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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...
What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?
It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.
What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing. It is uncertain whethe...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
We use WSO2 API Manager ( /products/wso2-api-manager-reviews ) to integrate our telecom products with third-party REST APIs. We are orchestrating services where our business process defines the int...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.