For NOW, pancakes are better on several fronts such as liquidity and also token listings. but ApeSwap is undoubtedly the new generation that has the capability to compete in the future, so it's just a matter of waiting for the right momentum and completing some homework, then ApeSwap will move fast.
The reason Pancake got an upper hand is because Uniswap is using ETH who is struggling with their higher fees and the Binance launched pancake Swap with BSC chain as its native chain and because of the lower transaction charges and the high reputation of Binance owning the project the liquidity started to increase and so is the reason it is competing against Uniswap but whether a new DEX can compete against PancakeSwap is to be seen.