Apistaq vs Zally

Apistaq is an API governance control plane for platform teams that builds versioning, rate-limit policies, SDKs, and developer portals from OpenAPI specifications. It tracks spec changes, identifies breaking changes, and supports documentation by version, deprecation notices, and sunset dates. Rate-limit policies can use token bucket, sliding window, or fixed window algorithms, with global, tag-level, and endpoint-level inheritance. SDK generation covers TypeScript, Python, and Go, with publishing options for npm, PyPI, and pkg.go.dev; generation is available on Builder and Platform. The generated portal can include an interactive explorer, versioned documentation, SDK links, and spec-derived changelogs. Specs can be supplied through GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, a direct URL, or manual YAML or JSON upload. Apistaq says it does not proxy API traffic and is not an API gateway. The Free plan is free, Builder is $149 a month, and Platform is $399 a month. The Free plan includes basic versioning for up to three versions per API and global rate-limit policies.

Zally is an API linter and quality assurance tool for OpenAPI specifications. It supports OpenAPI 3 and Swagger OpenAPI 2, with a RESTful API, command-line interface, and web interface. Its standard configuration checks APIs against Zalando’s RESTful Guidelines, and the project says it can also be used out of the box by others. Teams can enable or disable server-side rules, configure some existing rules, or implement their own in Kotlin. An API definition can use the x-zally-ignore extension to disable rules for that API. The web interface lists implemented rules and can lint external files and API definitions in its online editor. The project describes starting the web UI, server, and database together using Docker Compose. It also lists an unofficial Zally Maven Plugin integration. Maintained by Zalando, Zally is offered under an MIT license with an exception. Its Open source plan costs nothing.