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Merge vs Nango vs Paragon: Which should you choose in 2024?

There are scenarios in which an embedded iPaaS is a better solution, and vice versa. This guide provides an objective outline of each platform’s strengths, limitations, and use cases.

Brian Yam

,

Head of Marketing

mins to read

If you’re evaluating integration platforms for your SaaS application, and are comparing Merge.dev vs. Nango, this article is for you.

Both platforms are unified APIs, and if you’re constraining your evaluation within the unified API space, we will compare both in detail below. However, to take a step back - while the unified API promise of building N integrations at once is true, the approach comes with many limitations, resulting in many engineering teams switching to embedded iPaaS solutions.

That’s why we’ll introduce a third option into the mix, Paragon (that’s us).

That said, we’re not here to bias you towards Paragon—there are simply scenarios in which an embedded iPaaS is a better fit and vice versa.

Instead, we’ll provide an unbiased and objective outline of each platform’s strengths, limitations, and use cases so you can make an informed decision.

Don’t have time to read the entire article? Here’s a quick overview of our key takeaways. ⤵️

If you want to get hands-on, check out Paragon’s documentation here and sign up for a trial.

TL;DR

Merge.dev and Nango are unified APIs, which enable engineers to define a ‘category’ integration once and instantly ship multiple standardized, app-specific integrations. This comes at the expense of extensibility, as you’re limited to the lowest common denominator of objects and fields within each unified APIs, not to mention the integrations that their unified APIs support.
Paragon is an embedded iPaaS that provides connectors to over 100 SaaS applications. It has managed webhook triggers, abstractions over third-party APIs, and a serverless infrastructure for executing billions of requests per month. While you can reuse pieces of integration logic across integrations, it is not a unified API.
Merge.dev is a leader in the unified API category, covering 7 categories and over 200 integrations across those categories. Merge is a great option if you want to build dozens of HRIS & ATS integrations with a simple directory sync.
Nango is a much newer entrant in the unified API space, with a fast-growing integration catalog. Thanks to its open-source approach to integrations, it allows engineering teams to add their own integrations to an existing unified API spec. However, their integrations' endpoint coverage is far behind Merge.
Paragon is a far more extensible solution that not only provides full access to the underlying 3rd party APIs, but also makes it easy to build your own custom integrations and connectors. This enables any use case to be built on the platform—from real-time bi-directional syncs to high volume ingestion job.

Features - Merge.dev vs Nango vs Paragon

Since all three solutions are designed for building customer-facing integrations, they share some common features, especially Nango and Merge.dev.

However, each platform has unique functionalities and capabilities that provide value you may care about.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each solution’s standout features ⤵️

Paragon Features

As the only embedded iPaaS among the three solutions, Paragon has a specific set of features that dev teams prefer, as it lets you create and ship a wide range of custom, bespoke integrations.

1. Workflow Engine

Workflows are how engineering teams implement the background job for their integrations in Paragon. With Workflows, you can build deep and complex integration jobs while relying on Paragon’s serverless workflow engine for executing a high volume of (concurrent) requests, maintaining webhook triggers, handling rate limits, and much more.

Workflows can be used to implement a variety of use cases, including:

Real-time bi-directional sync - which allows for data (such as Contacts, Invoices, or Tasks) to be fully synced between your application and your users’ 3rd party apps.
Data ingestion - which lets you pull data from integrated apps
Automation - enables you to trigger automations in your app or your users’ 3rd party applications whenever a defined event occurs

Below are two product tours - one for authoring workflows in Paragraph (our Typescript framework), and one for building workflows in the visual workflow builder.

Things brings us to the second feature - Paragraph.

2. Paragraph

To dive further into Paragraph - it is a Typescript framework that lets developers build and maintain integrations in code, but with all the platform benefits of a managed integration platform.

Unlike all other embedded iPaaS that rely on low-code interfaces alone, Paragraph brings the power of a managed integration workflow engine together with the re-usability, version control, and code review benefits of code.

Paragraph closes this gap by providing the best of both:

All the benefits of code extensibility, like version control, code review and reuse, change tracking, etc.
The advantages of embedded iPaaS, including managed authentication, pre-built integration connectors, a serverless workflow engine, and more.

Additionally, Paragraph projects can be seamlessly synced with a Git repository, allow for two-way team collaboration, version control, and revision tracking.

But the best thing about Paragraph isn’t just its ability to help you build and ship integrations faster and easier.

Its true power lies in its ability to help developers create new implementation and design patterns, which opens up new use cases.

For instance, with Paragraph, developers can define reusable workflow abstractions that can be deployed across multiple integrations.

This essentially provides a unified integration development experience with one key difference - no constraints of a unified API.

Experience Paragraph, Paragon’s Integrations as Code, below ⤵️ or learn about it here.

3. App event, webhook, and request integration triggers

All workflows start with a trigger - an event that specifies how the workflow will run and how data will be passed between apps.

Paragon offers a broader scope of trigger types than Merge and Nango, including:

App events (e.g., “Contact Created” event in your app will set off a workflow that creates a corresponding account in your user’s Customer Relationship Management software).
Scheduler to automatically run workflows at a specific scheduled time or interval.
Webhook triggers (event in your user’s app sets off an action in your app, e.g., “New Account Created” in Salesloft creates a matching record in your app).
Integration Enabled that activates workflows when a user initially enables your integration (for example, you can automatically sync all contacts from your customer’s CRM to your app once the integration is activated for the first time).
Request, which allows for data from the incoming request to pass in workflows and activate them (e.g., when a lead is created in your app, you could trigger a workflow that sends the lead data to your customer's CRM and return a custom response).

This trigger range gives you complete control over how and when your integrations will begin, function, and sync data.

It’s one of the main reasons companies like copy.ai pick Paragon over unified APIs like Nango and Merge.dev. Because they can deliver tailored and smoother experiences to their end users.

4. Custom integration builder

This is a very nifty feature if Paragon’s integration catalog doesn’t support the integration you need.

With it, you can create a custom connector with any app provider and configure it to your requirements.

These custom integrations will include all the features and benefits available with Paragon’s native integrations, such as:

Embedded Connect Portal for your end users to activate and configure the integration.
Visual workflow editor and Paragraph for building custom integration logic.
Access to any API methods provided by the application's API.
Fully managed authentication with OAuth 2.0 or API Keys.
Robust monitoring & observability tools.
Serverless workflow engine.

As a result, you can deliver flexible product integrations and virtually any functionality your customers may need. Try it for yourself ⤵️

Merge.dev Features

Merge.dev is a unified API provider that supports integrations with over 200 SaaS apps.

These integrations fall under just 7 unified APIs, most of which fall under the HRIS/ATS space, and supports the most integrations across all unified API platforms.

Some of its key features include:

Common data models

This feature lies at the core of Merge.dev’s integration capabilities.

The platform offers unified models for each category of software APIs, allowing you to easily connect your product with any number of apps in a given vertical through a single API.

What does it entail? You won’t have to deal with data transformations in each external API.

Sandbox accounts for testing integrations

Merge.dev offers access to sandbox accounts for some of its external providers, allowing users to test their integrations before deploying them. This can come in handy when you’re handling new integrations or are new to integrations as a service

💡Note: This feature is available only to Merge.dev users on the Professional and Enterprise Plans.

Observability

The platform includes a comprehensive dashboard that automatically detects issues and lets you configure each account’s linking flow and available integrations, monitor logs, monitor relevant activity, and more.

Merge’s customers value those kinds of analytics because they give more control over customers’ integrations and allow for the efficient management of account health.

Nango Features

Nango is an open-source unified API platform that was launched last year.

Thanks to its community of contributors, it already has a solid range of unified API categories and individual app connectors.

It has several distinct features:

Strong API coverage

Nango already has over 190 pre-configured APIs across 28 categories, including accounting, CRM, banking, sports, analytics, legal, and more.

Customizable templates

Integration templates are pre-built abstractions that can trigger specific actions in various platforms or sync data. They speed up the integration deployment process and can be customized to fit specific use cases.

💡These templates are maintained by the open source community

Self-hosting

Unlike many unified API platforms, Nango offers self-hosting options for users relying on their own infrastructure (for security and management reasons).

You can either self-host or subscribe to Nango’s Enterprise plan to self-host the entire platform and access all its features.

Integrations - Merge.dev vs Nango vs Paragon

Paragon

Paragon natively supports 100+ apps across more than 20 categories.

Some of its notable pre-built integrations include HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Drive, Slack, Jura, Klaviyo, and GitHub.

Remember that Paragon is an embedded iPaaS, meaning you’re not constricted by its pre-built integrations the way you are with unified APIs.

Paragon’s motto ▶️ Depth > Quantity.

Merge.dev

Although Merge’s unified API covers only 7 software categories, each lets you connect to a multitude of applications.

Merge.dev has a particularly stark edge over other unified API integration platforms in the HRIS (50+) and ATS (40+) categories, as it covers the highest number of apps in these verticals compared to all other platforms.

Nango

Nango’s unified APIs continue to grow in number, both for specific software verticals and individual apps.

Currently, Nango has 100+ pre-configured APIs across 20+ categories.

Nango’s team and its large GitHub community regularly contribute new APIs, making Nango one of the fastest-growing unified API providers.

What should you value regarding Integrations?

There’s no point in comparing integration catalogs between iPaaS and Unified APIs. They’re completely different approaches, but viable depending on what you care about.

Paragon’s inherent extensibility as an embedded iPaaS, enhanced by its Paragraph feature, doesn’t make it as dependent on its pre-built integrations as in the case of unified APIs.

Although Merge.dev still leads in the number of apps included in its unified APIs, Nango is hot on its tracks and already provides more versatile software categories.

Additionally, Nango offers options for building custom integrations and has a large community of users and contributors.