--- title: Davide's Code and Architecture Notes - Pros and Cons of... description: API Gateways act as a façade in front of a system's internal services, offering benefits like reduced internal API exposure, centralized access control and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/davide-s-code-and-architecture-notes---pros-and-cons-of-api-gateways-with-vendors-comparison--rrbqkh63s twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Davide's Code and Architecture Notes - Pros and Cons of API Gateways (with vendors comparison) | daily.dev og:description: API Gateways act as a façade in front of a system's internal services, offering benefits like reduced internal API exposure, centralized access control and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/davide-s-code-and-architecture-notes---pros-and-cons-of-api-gateways-with-vendors-comparison--rrbqkh63s og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/RrbqKh63S.png og:image:alt: Davide's Code and Architecture Notes - Pros and Cons of API Gateways (with vendors comparison) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Davide's Code and Architecture Notes - Pros and Cons of API Gateways (with vendors comparison) **[Code4IT](https://daily.dev/sources/code4it)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary API Gateways act as a façade in front of a system's internal services, offering benefits like reduced internal API exposure, centralized access control and rate limiting, protocol translation, and performance improvements such as caching and SSL termination. Downsides include becoming a single point of failure, added latency from the extra network hop, and vendor lock-in risk. The piece also clarifies that API Gateways differ from Load Balancers, since the former unify disparate services while the latter distribute traffic across instances of the same service. A vendor comparison covers Kong, Tyk, Express Gateway, Zuul, Azure API Management, Amazon API Gateway, and Google Cloud API Gateway, detailing pricing models and trade-offs for each. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the difference between an API Gateway and a Load Balancer? An API Gateway acts as a façade unifying access to multiple different services, often with different protocols or formats, while a Load Balancer simply distributes incoming requests across multiple instances of the same service. They solve different architectural problems, though some vendors provide both capabilities in one product. _Architects weighing gateway versus load balancer choices can track deeper comparisons like this on daily.dev._ ### What are the main downsides of using an API Gateway in a microservices architecture? An API Gateway introduces a single point of failure, since all external traffic routes through it and an outage or misconfiguration can take down the whole system even if individual services are healthy. It also adds network latency as an extra hop, and creates vendor lock-in risk if pricing or features change later. _Developers deciding whether to adopt a gateway can follow architecture trade-off discussions like this on daily.dev._ ### How do Kong, Tyk, and Azure API Management compare for pricing and limitations? Kong offers free community and paid enterprise tiers but has limited GraphQL support and potential performance issues at scale; Tyk has no free tier with its Starter plan at $600/month for up to 10 million calls; Azure API Management offers a free tier plus paid tiers from $0.07/hour to $3.83/hour but has a complex pricing model and requires Azure Active Directory. _Teams comparing API gateway vendors can keep tabs on pricing and feature changes via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [API Gateway in Microservices: A Complete Guide for Developers](https://daily.dev/posts/api-gateway-in-microservices-a-complete-guide-for-developers-ona7cjfwl) · C\# Corner · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Gateway Is a Tired Concept, Because Gateways Are About Power](https://daily.dev/posts/the-gateway-is-a-tired-concept-because-gateways-are-about-power-e1ukdrrnf) · API Evangelist · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why API Gateways Aren’t Good for East-West Traffic](https://daily.dev/posts/why-api-gateways-aren-t-good-for-east-west-traffic-w6s0vi8no) · Nordic APIs · 5 upvotes · 0 comments - [Using an API Gateway with Fine-Grained Authorization](https://daily.dev/posts/using-an-api-gateway-with-fine-grained-authorization-4i7unvhbp) · Auth0 · 6 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#azure](https://daily.dev/tags/azure), [#microservices](https://daily.dev/tags/microservices), [#api-gateway](https://daily.dev/tags/api-gateway) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/davide-s-code-and-architecture-notes---pros-and-cons-of-api-gateways-with-vendors-comparison--rrbqkh63s) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Davide's Code and Architecture Notes - 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