Amazon API Gateway vs API Portal

Amazon API Gateway is a cloud service for creating, publishing, maintaining, monitoring, and securing APIs that connect applications to backend services. It supports REST, HTTP, and WebSocket APIs, including real-time two-way communication. Integrations include AWS Lambda, Step Functions, Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, and public HTTP endpoints; HTTP APIs can also route requests to certain private services. API Gateway Portals provide managed spaces to discover, document, and govern REST APIs. Traffic controls include request throttling and configurable caching for REST APIs. The console integrates with Amazon CloudWatch for call, latency, and error metrics, alarms, and execution logs. Authorization options include IAM, Lambda authorizers, OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and other listed methods; REST API keys are optional. A free tier is available to new AWS customers for up to 12 months within monthly allowances, with excess usage charged at standard rates. Pay-as-you-go has no minimum fees or upfront commitments; the listed pricing note is From $1. WebSocket messages can be up to 128 KB and are metered in 32 KB increments.

API Portal is a central platform for building, testing, managing and documenting APIs. Its catalog provides a shared place to manage APIs and lets developers find them through self-service discovery. API Explorer supports interactive walkthroughs and browser-based tryouts, while a CLI and REST API can automate specification updates in deployment pipelines. Supported specifications include OpenAPI, Swagger, RAML, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema and GraphQL. Version management can detect breaking changes, generate changelogs from specification differences and apply deprecation policies with sunset timers. Ready-made CI/CD integrations are listed for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Jenkins. Teams can set granular permissions for viewing, testing and consuming APIs; enterprise setups can use SSO and SAML. The company says data is hosted in EU data centers in Frankfurt and that it is GDPR-compliant. Enterprise offers on-premise deployment. Starter includes up to five APIs and three team members; Professional offers unlimited APIs and 25 team members; Enterprise includes unlimited teams. Pricing is on request, and a 14-day trial is available; there is no free plan.