Azure API Management vs. Azure Application Gateway

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure API Management
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure API Management supports creation of API.
$0.04
per 10,000 calls
Azure Application Gateway
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Application Gateway is a platform-managed, scalable, and highly available application delivery controller as a service with integrated web application firewall.N/A
Pricing
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Editions & Modules
Consumption
0.042 per 10,000 calls
Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
Developer
$48.04
per month Non-production use cases and evaluations
Basic
$147.17
per month Entry-level production use cases
Standard
$686.72
per month Medium-volume production use cases
Premium
$2,795.17
per month High-volume or enterprise production use cases
Isolated
TBA
per month Enterprise production use cases requiring high degree of isolation
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Considered Both Products
Azure API Management
Chose Azure API Management
N/A
Azure Application Gateway
Chose Azure Application Gateway
I have my dependency application in Azure Application Gateway. I had to use this, and it has all the features we were looking for.
Chose Azure Application Gateway
HAProxy is an excellent load balancer that can also be used in cloud environments (and we do!), and is relied by hyper-large enterprises globally as well. However, HAProxy is a little bit more rudimentary in feature space, it does the core job well and securely, but doesn't …
Chose Azure Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway gives you application-level routing and load-balancing services that let you build a scalable and highly-available web front end in Azure.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
API Management
Comparison of API Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure API Management
8.0
4 Ratings
2% below category average
Azure Application Gateway
-
Ratings
API access control8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies5.44 Ratings00 Ratings
API usage data8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
API user onboarding9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
API versioning8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
Usage billing and payments5.23 Ratings00 Ratings
API monitoring and logging9.84 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Small Businesses
NGINX
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Cloudflare
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Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(4 ratings)
7.8
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure API ManagementAzure Application Gateway
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
APIM is useful for the standard scenarios:
1) Securing your back-end APIs - If you have a legacy back-end web service that has a basic authentication scheme, you can add some additional security by placing APIM in front, and requiring subscription keys. Leverage your existing firewall to ensure only your APIM instance can communicate with your back-end API, and you've basically added a layer of protection.
2) Lift and shift - there are always going to be clients that don't want to update their clients to use a newer API; in some cases you can make a newer API look like an older one by implementing some complex policies in APIM. You can also do the opposite, making older APIs look new, such as making an XML back-end accept both JSON and XML.
3) Centralizing your APIs - if you've acquired another company and want to make their API set look as if it's a part of the larger whole, APIM is an easy way to provide a consistent front-end interface for developers.
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Microsoft
For building scalable and highly available applications, Azure Application Gateway does most of the job on behalf of you; automatically load-balancing traffic from a number of users to a number of back-end servers. This ensure scalability and availability. The in-built security is great as can be expected from Microsoft, and user has a variety of tools for monitoring the health of the load-balancing function as well as the health of back end servers behind it.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Easy commissioning of APIs.
  • Great policies to control access.
  • Easy mock services for testing.
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Microsoft
  • Easy integration with Load Balancer and Azure Scale Set to provide a full solution for traffic management.
  • With rich routing rule, we could use one Application Gateway as the central point for all internal applications to expose to the external network.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Lack of robustness is a bit of an issue. Several other providers offer more options and capabilities, but then, they are lacking in interface ease.
  • As with anything Azure, pricing is really hard to stay on top of. I always find that you really don’t know what you’re paying for until you get the bill. Having an excellent Azure Administrator can help resolve that.
  • Integrating with app services outside of Azure can be a challenge, or at least much more challenging than just using Azure App Services.
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Microsoft
  • Live examples in the Azure documentation
  • Application Gateway UI Blade in Azure Portal can be streamlined
  • Have more advanced feature set as WAF (Web Application Firewall)
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Support Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I don’t like that it's part of the Microsoft brand. In general, I am not a fan of Microsoft products but Azure gets it right.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:
1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.
2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.
3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.
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Microsoft
Other load balancing tools in Azure (Azure LB and Azure Traffic Manager) are limited in their functionality in comparison with the Azure Application Gateway, and also, they don't provide security features. Azure Firewall, although it has security features, is more expensive, and most importantly, it's not a load balancer at all.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • We can always think of positive ROI impact on business
  • It helps to easily facilitate the design, deployment, and maintenance of our APIs
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Microsoft
  • Costs increased for the company, so expenses were more than before.
  • Was able to get better user experience so users won't feel the website is useless.
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ScreenShots