API Gateway

API Gateway is AWS's implementation of the architectural pattern (opens new window) with the same name. There can be multiple reasons to use it, but most commonly we use it to have a single point of entry for our backend services. It can serve similar purposes to an ALB, however, it offers much more features.

We recommend using it if you:

• adopted a microservices/lambda architecture
• are running a SaaS product
• want to reduce as much as possible non-business code from your backend (e.g. authentication/authorization)

In practice, it tends to get quite costly even though, at first, the pricing might seem a bargain. In fact, it is usually the main cost driver for (common) serverless approaches.

Main Features

• AuthN/Z
• Consumption control
• OpenAPI
• SDK generation
• Caching
• Transforms

REST APIs

HTTP APIs