Those are both choices to produce an image with a wide angle-of-view. The result will not be exactly the same though.

Since you have an interchangeable lens camera, you have full manual controls which means you can lock exposure, focus and white-balance so that you can get consistent shots to stitch together. Once you have stitched images together, you will have a much higher-resolution image than you would with a single shot. This can be a huge advantage and allow much larger print sizes or lower noise when it is printed at less than the maximum possible size.

There are some disadvantages though:

• Anything that moves is problematic. If something moves in the overlap area, then it will cause some stitching problems. Depending on the case, the results may or may not be usable. Some software have ghost removal tools which help but do not work 100% of the time. Large moving object such as trucks and cars often cause problems.
• To get a prefect set of images for stitching you must rotate the lens around its nodal point. This requires a tripod and panoramic head matched to your lens or a configurable one which is much more bulky and expensive. Doing it by hand is possible and often done but the result may show parallax problems. This occurs when you have foreground objects.
• Stitching a panorama takes time and processing power. You will not see your results right away which means having to return home or to the hotel before knowing if the sequence worked. This is honestly the most troublesome part. Even with panoramic head and tripod, I sometimes get a set of images which software is unable to stitch correctly. Subject motion and user error are the most common source of these issues. Knocking the focus ring between images for example happened recently to me.
• It takes time on the ground too. When shooting panoramas, I end up with much fewer images since the time to setup is relatively high. You have to position the tripod, set up the head, mount the camera. You also have to do your own metering because the optimal exposure rarely is the same for each individual frame as it is for the whole. Same with WB.