Merge published a comparison page positioning themselves against Kombo. We don’t have a comparison page of our own, but we’ve had enough customers and prospects addressing the page, or its content, in conversations that it felt worth addressing directly.

TL;DR we follow different strategies

The fundamental difference between Kombo and Merge isn’t about feature checkboxes, but about product strategy:

1. Merge started with HRIS and ATS integrations, but has been diversifying away for years - first into ticketing, CRM, and chat, and most recently beyond customer-facing integrations entirely with Merge Gateway, an LLM routing product for AI infrastructure.
2. Kombo has always been, and will remain, focused exclusively on people data. This is what we do best.

Respect where it's due

Before we get into details, we’d like to stress the deep respect we have for Merge. It’s a great company with a very capable team, and they deserve all the credit for popularizing the unified API category as one of the first movers. None of what follows is intended to be a takedown.

That said, their comparison page contains several claims about Kombo that are either factually incorrect or outdated. For technical and product leaders evaluating the integration space, these inaccuracies matter.

Why comparison pages exist — and why this one exists

Competitor pages exist for SEO and LLM search. When you’re using Google or an LLM to search for a solution or to compare competitors, companies naturally want to own the answer and narrative. That is a very rational marketing move, and we’re not criticizing it.

What’s worth noting, however, is that the page was published two years ago and had inaccuracies from the start. We reached out to Merge last year to request an update and to correct the inaccuracies, but they haven’t followed through on their promise to do so.

What sets us apart

Here’s what technical and product leaders in people tech typically evaluate when selecting an integration vendor:

API coverage

A unified API provider should grow with your needs. Merge diversifies across over eight verticals, while Kombo focuses exclusively on workforce tech. That means our entire engineering team works on HRIS, ATS, Payroll, and LMS integration challenges, rather than spreading thin across categories.

Integration depth and data coverage

Not all integrations are built equally, and depth matters more than category counts. Because we build exclusively in people data, we are able to provide more depth per integration, and extend into adjacent people-tech categories like LMS and Assessment rather than chat, CRM, or ticketing.

For HRIS, Kombo supports workflows like creating employees in enterprise HRIS and specialized data models like performance data, staffing entities, and skills that Merge doesn’t support.

For ATS, Kombo supports updating application stages for 45 systems and posting screening-question answers for 91. Merge supports updating application stages for 14 systems and posting screening-question answers for 11. See the table below for the full breakdown across the two categories.

Support quality

Integration challenges need both deep system knowledge and fast resolution. Kombo gives you direct Slack access to the engineers who built your integrations on every plan. Merge routes tickets through general support and reserves Slack and onboarding support for its enterprise tier.

Correcting the comparison table

This is Merge’s own feature comparison, with the numbers brought up to date.

Going deeper across HRIS and ATS

Here’s the breakdown of how Kombo and Merge compare at the level of actual data models and operations supported across systems.

On security and compliance

Merge’s page implies Kombo doesn’t offer equivalent protections. It does. Point for point:

• DPAs and SCCs: In place with all customers, with standard contractual clauses for cross-border transfers. DPA
• Data residency: US and EU tenancy, and your customer data stays where you choose.
• Data minimization via scopes: Configure exactly which fields, objects, and data points sync per integration; anonymize fields at ingestion. Scopes
• Selective sync: Supported. Filtering
• Data deletion: Deleting a linked account purges associated data; selective exclusion is supported. Data policy
• Audit trail: All user actions logged and searchable in-dashboard. Audit logs
• SSO / SAML and RBAC: Both supported. Roles
• Certifications: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001. Security

The framing problem

The deeper issue with Merge’s page is that the framing presents Merge as a superset of Kombo - a bigger version of the same thing. That’s not an accurate description of either product, and the gap has widened over the past year.

When you build your product on a unified API, you’re betting that your vendor will still be investing in your category’s connectors, write operations, and enterprise edge cases five years from now.

Merge is a multi-product company. Alongside eight integration categories, their newest flagship product, Merge Gateway, is an LLM router for AI infrastructure - a different market with a different buyer. That’s a rational strategy, and it may be a great product. But engineering attention is finite, and every new market dilutes what’s left for any single category - including the HRIS and ATS integrations your product depends on.

Kombo is a vertical specialist built for HR and people tech. Every engineer we hire works on HRIS, ATS, LMS, and assessment integrations, because that’s the entire company. That’s where 4+ years of building exclusively in this space compounds, and why the gap grows rather than closes.

If your product spans many unrelated categories and you want one vendor for all of them, Merge is built for that. If you’re building in people tech, ask both of us the same question: what share of your roadmap is going into my category next year?

You don’t have to take our word for it.

Merge’s newest flagship product, Merge Gateway, isn’t solving for customer-facing integrations. It’s an LLM router and “control plane for production AI.” It’s what Merge promotes on its homepage today, it’s where their case studies and launch promotions are going.

This is a rational bet for Merge. But if you’re choosing an integration vendor for the next four years, it tells you where their engineering attention is going.

What customers are saying about Merge

Over the past few months, we’ve collected feedback during prospect and customer calls. Three themes come up consistently, as provided by customers in their own words.

Merge is moving away from people tech

Merge has signaled, both publicly and directly to customers, that its focus is shifting toward newer categories like CRM, ticketing, and chat. One prospect shared the note they received from Merge:

We have decided to deprioritize bringing in new customers on our professional plan for our ATS category, as we're currently heavily investing in other categories and products.

A long-time partner of theirs put it more plainly:

They care a lot more about the CRM category than they do about HRIS. The HRIS category is languishing.

Support is slow outside the enterprise tier

Customers on Merge’s Launch and Professional plans repeatedly tell us resolution is slow:

Frankly, I'm less than impressed with how Merge engages with customers. We've had to wait a long time to get answers on technical details.

Syncing large instances is unreliable

This came from one of Merge’s own featured case-study customers, who’s now migrating 300+ integrations to Kombo:

The first sync with you was extremely smooth. We've not had that with Merge. In a lot of cases the sync is always a little bit off. Sometimes it syncs all the data, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it takes ages. Workday is a particularly hard one, so getting through the entire sync cleanly with you is already a very good sign.

One last thing

If you’re evaluating integration providers and building in people tech, pressure-test both platforms on the specific integrations and data models that matter for your use case, not on category counts or checkbox comparisons.

Ask:

• Where is the vendor investing next - deeper into your category, or into new markets and product lines?
• How many integrations actually support writing the specific fields you need?
• How do they handle the initial sync of very large enterprise instances, where you’ll hit rate limits?
• How many systems do they provide sandboxes for?
• Can they fast-track partnerships for hard-to-crack vendors?
• How well does the support team understand the quirks of the specific systems your customers use?

Those questions will tell you more than any comparison page.

Frequently asked questions