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Ron Huber

Ron Huber is the CEO and co-founder of Achieve Internet. He's an experienced senior executive with over 15 years managing and leading software teams in the online media, Internet, and software development space.

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As more businesses adopt digital transformation strategies and productize their APIs, the demand for API management solutions has grown roughly 33% in the past five years.

Two of the most common API management solutions are Amazon API Gateway and Google Cloud Product (GCP) Apigee API Management. They both provide essential services for distributing APIs, but their approaches differ significantly from each other.

Let's look at how these differences for you to make an informed decision.

What is Amazon API Gateway?

Amazon API Gateway is a cloud-based web service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.

This gateway handles all of the tasks involved in accepting and processing hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls.

Amazon API Gateway lets you easily manage APIs that allow applications to access your backend services. Use this tool for creating RESTful APIs or WebSocket APIs with real-time updates that enable communication between applications.

Features and Functionality

Amazon API Gateway provides many features and functions, such as:

  • Security: Keep your API safe from malicious attacks by utilizing several security features, such as SSL/TLS encryption, OAuth 2.0, and native OIDC. Ensure only authorized and authenticated users have access to your API by using AWS Identity Access Management (IAM) and Amazon Cognito.

  • Traffic management: Use features like rate limiting to prevent your API from being overwhelmed by too many requests.

  • Amazon CloudWatch: View performance metrics and information on API calls from a dashboard, giving you clear visibility over your services.

  • Versioning: Manage different API versions independently to effectively develop new features and update existing ones.

Pros and Cons

The main advantages of using Amazon API Gateway are:

  • Scalability: Amazon API Gateway lets you seamlessly scale to handle millions of requests per day. Easily add or remove capacity as needed, ensuring you only pay for the resources you use.

  • Flexibility: Amazon API Gateway supports various protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, WebSockets, and TCP. It also supports multiple integration types, such as Lambda functions, HTTP proxies, and AWS Step Functions.

  • Support: With dedicated support teams, your issues are sure to be resolved in a timely manner.

The main disadvantages of using Amazon API Gateway are:

  • User interface issues: It's often difficult for multiple users to manage and configure endpoints.

  • Cost: Amazon is a pay-as-you-go service so If you have a lot of traffic or a complex application, Amazon API Gateway can be expensive. The price is based on the number of requests and the amount of data processed.

  • Minimalistic developer portal: While Amazon API Gateway now has a developer portal, it lacks advanced features and is difficult to setup.

What is Apigee?

Google's Apigee is a true API management solution for building and scaling your API programs with full life cycle capabilities, giving developers the freedom to create innovative solutions.

This lightweight gateway provides multiple services, such as an integrated developer portal and analytics tools, which are used to drive API consumption and access actionable insights about assets in circulation.

Apigee also makes it easy to monetize your APIs and maximize the value of your digital assets while ensuring the integrity of your data.

With an easy-to-use platform that provides you with all the features you need to get started, it's no wonder why Gartner named Apigee as an industry leader.

Features and Functionality

Apigee offers a number of features and functionalities to help you manage your API operations. These include:

  • API Monetization: Apigee supports various API packaging options that let you monetize your digital assets, unlocking new revenue streams for your business.

  • AI-Powered Analytics: Use real-time monitoring capabilities to give you visibility into how your API is being used, so you can optimize performance and troubleshoot issues.

  • Developer portal: A solid starting point that makes it easy to manage API documentation, community forums, and other resources for developers. For organizations looking to for more flexibility and greater access control, Apigee also provides an open-source portal they call Kickstarter.

  • Multi-layer security: Apigee provides many features to help you secure your API, including OAuth 2.0 support, Cloud Armor, and CMEK.

  • Scale: Apigee's scalable architecture can handle millions of API requests per day.

  • API-first integration: This unified platform takes advantage of cloud-native architecture principles to help enterprises build their operations and accelerate developer velocity to deliver new features faster than ever before.

Pros and Cons

Apigee has its own set of pros and cons that should be considered before implementing it as part of your API strategy.

The main advantages of using Apigee are:

  • Flexible deployment options: Businesses have the flexibility to choose between different ways to deploy their API ec