API Gateway pricing guide

Before diving into the fundamentals of how API gateways work, it's important to understand the cost considerations and pricing models associated with them. Following Gartner API gateway price and API gateway cost can vary significantly depending on factors such as traffic volume, number of API calls, security features, and deployment options (e.g., cloud-based vs. self-hosted).

API management Pricing models for API gateways often include tiered plans, pay-as-you-go structures, or flat-rate subscriptions, each catering to different scalability and usage needs. Many providers also offer an API gateway price calculator to help estimate monthly or annual costs based on expected usage. Keeping API gateway costs transparent and predictable is crucial for budgeting, especially for enterprises scaling their API infrastructure.

What are API Gateways

First things first, if you’re not already familiar with APIs, then here is a great primer for you to start with before continuing onto the subject of API gateways. Because APIs play such a pivotal role in facilitating seamless communication and data exchange within modern applications, API gateways have become more popular (and more necessary) than ever. They allow you to route API requests, enforce security measures, and optimize performance for all your backend APIs. They do this by sitting between an API (or group of microservices) and a collection of backend services in order to facilitate incoming requests and outgoing delivery of data and services. 

As a middleware layer, the gateway is responsible for intercepting and then routing requests to the appropriate service. In doing so, it acts as a single entry point and standardized process for all data exchanges (that pass through the gateway, of course). Because of its position as a gatekeeper of requests and data exchanges, API gateways can also be used to implement additional routing, performance, security, and analytics functionality to your API traffic. 

You could think of the API gateway as a customs checkpoint at an international airport. Customs controls the flow of people and goods into a country, ensuring that only those with proper documentation and authorization are allowed entry. They inspect cargo and luggage for compliance with regulations, collect tariffs, and monitor for illegal activities. Trying to fly into Paris with a gallon of milk or a pet tiger? Too bad; no entry for you. 

API gateways do the same thing: 

• ​​Access Control: Just like customs officers verify passports and visas, an API gateway checks the credentials of incoming API requests, ensuring that only authorized users and applications can access the backend services.
• Request Inspection: Customs might inspect goods for prohibited items and even confiscate them if necessary. Similarly, the API gateway examines incoming requests for security threats, such as SQL injection attacks or malformed data, ensuring the request adheres to expected protocols and policies. If not, then the request is denied. 
• Traffic Management: Customs checkpoints manage the flow of traffic to prevent congestion and ensure smooth processing (if you’re lucky, that is). Likewise, an API gateway handles rate limiting and load balancing to ensure that backend services are not overwhelmed by a sudden influx of requests.
• Data Transformation: When you go through customs, you probably want to exchange your local currency for your destination’s currency. Or maybe you need a translator to help you communicate with the customs agent who’s giving you a hard time about your emotional support animal. API gateways can also transform request and response data formats, making sure that different parts of a system can communicate effectively even when they don’t speak the same language.
• Logging and Monitoring: Customs checkpoints log entries and exits for security and reporting purposes. Similarly, an API gateway logs all incoming requests and responses, providing a trail that can be audited and monitored for performance and security issues.

Easy enough, right? So now let’s take a quick look at the field of API management tools and vendors to contextualize the conversation before we dive into pricing and how to go about evaluating what pricing model would make the most sense for your use case.

AWS API Gateway

Overview

The AWS API Gateway is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables developers to expose their backend services as APIs to different clients – web application, mobile apps, or other AWS services. While AWS’s API gateway proxies traffic and can control access to your APIs, you will only be able to do so by writing Lambda functions (which requires very specific AWS skills) or by using a limited number of settings in the API usage plan.

Their solution also only offers limited support for REST APIs, HTTP APIs, and Websocket APIs, leaving many organizations that have different APIs and protocols being used with no solution. 

Key features

• Multi-API Support: Handles RESTful, HTTP, and WebSocket APIs.
• AWS Integration: Seamless integration with AWS services like Lambda, DynamoDB, and more.
• Scalability: Automatically scales to handle varying levels of traffic.
• Security: Comprehensive security options including IAM, custom authorizers, and API keys.
• Monitoring: Integrated with Amazon CloudWatch for detailed logging and monitoring.
• Caching: Built-in caching capabilities to reduce latency and improve performance.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• Seamless integration with other AWS Services (i.e., Lambda, Step Functions, and Elastic Beanstalk)
• Handles high levels of traffic with built-in throttling and caching to manage backend load efficiently
• Robust security features, including AWS IAM, custom authorizers, and API keys for third-party developers
• Integrates with Amazon CloudWatch to provide detailed monitoring, logging, and custom alerts

Weaknesses: 

• Only supports HTTP, REST, and WebSocket APIs
• Very complex if you aren’t already familiar with other AWS Services
• Pay-as-you-go pricing can become expensive as you scale

AWS API gateway cost​

The cost of AWS API Gateway pricing depends on several factors, including request volume, data transfer, Caching, and regional data transfer.

Best choice for you if…

• You’re building applications using AWS Lambda and other AWS managed services
• You’re building real-time two-way communication applications like chat apps that use WebSocket APIs
• You’re integrating with private resources within a VPC, supporting private ALBs, NLBs, and ECS tasks registered in AWS Cloud Map

Learn more about AWS API management here. 

Kong API Gateway

Overview

Kong – in addition to a fully-featured API management platform – offers a mature enterprise API Gateway built on top of Nginx. Their gateway is particularly useful in terms of its service mesh capabilities and deployment flexibility, allowing you to run the gateway in any environment, platform, or implementation pattern. However, because Kong isn’t built on its own technology stack, the gateway is limited in its depth of support for asynchronous APIs. 

Key features

• Extensive Plugin Ecosystem: Over 40 plugins for authentication, traffic control, security, and more.
• Performance and Scalability: Handles high throughput with low latency.
• Kubernetes Native: Integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes via the Kong Ingress Controller.
• Multi-Protocol Support: Supports REST, gRPC, GraphQL, and WebSocket APIs.
• Security Features: Provides OAuth2, OpenID Connect, mTLS, and more for secure API management.
• Declarative Configuration: Supports configuration via declarative syntax for version control and automation.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• High performance and low latency due to Nginx architecture
• Wide range of plugins for authentication, traffic control, transformations, and logging
• Flexible deployment, suitable for decentralized microservices architectures
• Integrates well with other platforms like Kubernetes, AWS, and other cloud providers

Weaknesses: 

• Complex configuration requiring a long implementation time, particularly for users who aren’t familiar with Nginx and Lua
• Resource-intensive, requiring careful tuning and optimization to avoid performance bottlenecks
• Limited support for asynchronous APIs and event brokers

Best choice for you if…

• You need an API gateway and a service mesh from a single vendor
• You’re operating across multiple cloud providers or on-premises data centers
• Your applications experience very high traffic volumes
• You’re using Kubernetes for deployments

Learn more about Kong API management here.

Apigee API Gateway

Overview

Apigee, like Kong, is a full API management platform with many other capabilities on top of their API Gateway. Though Google owns Apigee, there is a difference between Google API Gateway and Apigee’s API Gateway. Mainly, Apigee’s gateway has a policy engine that supports 50+ policy types, support for multiple deployment options, productization and monetization, advanced security, and data mediation; Google API Gateway, on the other hand, is more simple and only really supports API Keys or JWT-based auth. So if you have a single endpoint (or a handful) running in Cloud Run or Cloud Functions and you only want to put some standard authentication and rate limiting in front of them, then Google API Gateway is what you want. But if you’re using many endpoints, lots of disparate data sources, different teams, multiple clouds, etc., then Apigee is a better choice.

So, to clarify, the below information is about Apigee, not Google API Gateway.

Key features

• Traffic management: controls and optimizes API traffic to ensure performance and prevent overload
• Analytics and monitoring: provides detailed analytics and monitoring tools to track API usage and performance
• Policy enforcement: facilitates governance by enforcing a wide range of policies and access controls
• API lifecycle management: supports all stages of the API lifecycle, from design and deployment to monitoring and optimization

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• Comprehensive API Management: As mentioned above, Apigee offers end-to-end API lifecycle management, including design, security, deployment, and monitoring.
• Advanced Security Features: Apigee provides robust security mechanisms such as OAuth, API key management, and role-based access control (RBAC). It also ensures compliance with standards like SOC 2 and HIPAA.
• AI-driven Analytics: The platform includes advanced analytics powered by AI to monitor API usage, performance, and detect anomalies, providing valuable insights for optimization and troubleshooting.
• Flexibility: Supports deployment in various environments, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid setups, making it adaptable to different organizational needs.
• Legacy System Integration: Apigee excels in integrating with legacy systems, allowing modernization through APIs without extensive redevelopment efforts.

Weaknesses: 

• Cost: Apigee can be relatively expensive, especially for large-scale deployments, due to its comprehensive feature set and the associated infrastructure costs.
• Complexity: The platform's extensive capabilities can lead to a steep learning curve and complexity in setup and management, particularly for smaller teams or those new to API management.
• Resource Intensive: Running Apigee, particularly in large-scale environments, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant infrastructure and maintenance.

Best choice for you if…

• You’re a large enterprise that requires all the bells and whistles that come with Apigee (and are willing to pay accordingly) – Apigee is ideal for huge enterprises that need the advanced security, analytics, and centralized control
• You have stringent compliance requirements
• You have complex API monetization needs

Learn more about Apigee API management here.

Tyk API Gateway

Overview

Tyk offers an open-source API gateway that’s highly performant and scalable, with particularly good support for GraphQL APIs. The gateway is just one part of Tyk’s comprehensive API management platform that includes all the features you’d expect: API analytics, a developer portal, and an API management dashboard. Tyk supports both self-managed and cloud deployments, providing flexibility for different organizational needs.

Key features

• Open source: Tyk's gateway is open source, offering transparency and flexibility for developers who want to customize their API management solution.
• Performance and Scalability: Tyk’s gateway is designed to handle high throughput and low latency, making it suitable for large-scale deployments. Its architecture supports horizontal scaling to meet increasing demand.
• GraphQL Support: Tyk supports GraphQL, including introspection queries, field-based permissions, and subscription handling, providing flexibility for modern API development.
• Plugins: Tyk supports custom plugins in various languages such as JavaScript, Python, and Lua, allowing developers to extend the functionality of the gateway to meet specific needs.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• Flexibility and customization: Tyk’s open-source nature and plugin support provide extensive customization capabilities, allowing organizations to tailor the gateway to their specific requirements.
• Security: Tyk offers a wide range of security features that are essential for protecting APIs in enterprise environments. 
• Community and support: Tyk has a strong community and provides extensive documentation, making it easier for developers to get started and troubleshoot issues.

Weaknesses: 

• Complexity: Due to an extensive feature set and plugin ecosystem, Tyk can be complex to configure and manage, especially for organizations without prior experience in API management
• Resource intensive: Running a self-managed Tyk deployment can be resource-intensive, requiring dedicated infrastructure and personnel for maintenance and scaling

Best choice for you if…

• You’re using GraphQL APIs
• You have large-scale deployments with high API traffic volumes
• You have a lot of customization needs

Learn more about Tyk API management here.

Gravitee API Gateway

Overview

The Gravitee event-native API Management platform with a 4.5 rating enables teams to manage, secure, and expose synchronous and asynchronous APIs. Our event-native foundations give the Gravitee Gateway the flexibility to:

• Support of all modern AsyncAPI protocols (i.e. Websocket, Webhook, SSE)
• Provide native integration to event brokers (e.g. Kafka, Kinesis, Solace, RabbitMQ, MQTT, JMS)
• Fully support the AsyncAPI specification across the entire lifecycle of the API (i.e. API Designer support AsyncAPI specs and so does the portal)
• Apply traditional APIM capabilities (policy execution, traffic shaping, quotas, rate limiting, authentication, Analytics, etc.) to asynchronous and synchronous APIs

In addition to synchronous and asynchronous flexibility, Gravitee offers a wide breadth of functionality that spans the entire API lifecycle—offering a graphical API Designer, a CLI-and-UI-enabled Gateway and Management console, API Security and Access Management, a fully-featured API Developer Portal, API Monitoring, and more.

Key features

• Open source: Gravitee’s API gateway is open source, allowing for transparency and flexibility for developers who want more customization
• Policy management: Create and manage policy flows to control API behavior, including rate limiting, caching, transformation, and security enforcement – many of these policies can be applied at the message level for asynchronous APIs.
• Multi-Protocol Support: Supports various protocols such as REST, SOAP, WebSockets, TCP, and more. 
• Plugin ecoystem: Extensible architecture with plugins for custom functionality and integration.
• Versioning and documentation: Manage API versions and automatically generate comprehensive API documentation.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:

• Support for synchronous and asynchronous APIs: Gravitee’s gateway manages different types of APIs effectively, catering to diverse integration scenarios, including event brokers like Kafka, RedPanda, and Solace
• Flexibility and extensibility: Gravitee’s internal plugin system allows for extensive customization, making it adaptable to various business needs
• Comprehensive API Management: Gravitee provides a full suite of tools for API lifecycle management, including governance, security, versioning, and documentation (it also offers a comprehensive Access Management solution)
• Scalability: Gravitee’s gateway is designed to handle varying workloads, making it suitable for growing businesses

Weaknesses: 

• Complexity for beginners: The extensive customization and flexibility may be overwhelming for new users or smaller teams without dedicated API management expertise.
• Initial setup and configuration: Setting up and configuring Gravitee to suit specific needs can be time-consuming.
• Documentation and community support: While improving, Gravitee’s documentation and community support may not be as robust as more established competitors.

Best choice for you if…

• You’re utilizing asynchronous APIs and event brokers and need to apply policies to those streaming APIs at the message level
• You’re operating across different environments and need flexible deployment options
• You have unique API management requirements and want to customize your solution to fit your needs (rather than an out-of-the-box solution like Apigee)

Now that we’ve covered the API Gateway vendor landscape and you’ve got an idea of what each solution offers, you probably want to know more about API Gateway price and API gateway Cost, so let’s talk pricing. Some of the vendors above operate on a pay-as-you-go usage pricing model while others are subscription-based (or, in some cases, you can choose which you prefer). Some of them also have a free tier with limited features for the more basic use cases. Let’s talk briefly about the difference between the pricing models and the pros and cons of each. 

• Usage-based pricing

• • Description: charges are based on the number of API calls, data transfer, or other usage metrics. Costs vary with the level of usage.
  • Pros: scales with actual usage, cost-effective for variable workloads.
  • Cons: can be expensive with high traffic; unpredictable costs.

• Subscription-based pricing

• • Description: fixed monthly or annual fee for a set number of API calls or a package of certain features. 
  • Pros: predictable costs, often includes a set number of API calls.
  • Cons: can be expensive for low-usage scenarios; may require longer-term commitment.

• Tiered pricing

• • Description: different pricing tiers based on usage levels or features sets. Costs increase as usage or feature needs grow.
  • Pros: offers flexibility, allows businesses to scale costs with growth.
  • Cons: may be complex to understand; potential for overpaying if usage falls between tiers.

• Freemium model

• • Description: basic services are free, with charges for premium features or higher usage levels.
  • Pros: low barrier to entry, try-before-you-buy approach.
  • Cons: Limited features in the free tier, potential for high costs if premium features become necessary.

• Per-feature pricing

• Description: charges based on specific features used rather than overall usage or tiered packages.
• Pros: pay only for the features you use; customizable to specific needs.
• Cons: can be difficult to manage and predict total costs; might lead to higher costs if many features are needed.

API Gateway price model for your use case

Let’s match each pricing model with its most ideal use case to start to get an idea of which model might make the most sense for you:

• Usage-Based Pricing: Ideal for businesses with seasonal traffic or unpredictable API usage patterns, such as e-commerce sites with peak shopping seasons.
• Subscription-Based Pricing: Suitable for enterprises with consistent API usage, such as internal APIs for enterprise applications.
• Tiered Pricing: Best for growing companies that need to scale their API usage as their customer base expands, such as SaaS providers.
• Freemium Model: Great for startups and individual developers looking to prototype or build initial versions of their applications without significant upfront costs.
• Per-Feature Pricing: Perfect for organizations needing specific API gateway functionalities without requiring a full-featured solution, such as companies integrating with specific third-party services.

Build vs. buy

Of course, there’s always the option to build your own API gateway rather than buy one from a vendor. The decision is largely dependent on organization size, available resources, specific needs, and long-term strategic goals.  Larger enterprises with unique requirements and ample resources may benefit from the flexibility and control of a custom-built solution. But SMEs, startups, and resource-constrained teams are likely better served by commercial API gateways that offer rapid deployment, scalability, and ongoing support. Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of each choice:

Building your own API Gateway

• Pros:
  • Full customization: Complete control over features and functionalities, allowing for tailored solutions specific to organizational needs.
  • Cost control: Avoids recurring licensing fees associated with commercial products. Costs are primarily upfront and related to development and maintenance.
  • Security control: Enhanced ability to implement and monitor security measures tailored to specific requirements and compliance standards.
  • Flexibility: Adaptable to changing business needs without dependency on third-party vendors.
• Cons: 
  • High initial investment: Significant upfront costs in terms of time, resources, and money for development.
  • Maintenance and upgrades: Ongoing responsibility for maintaining, updating, and scaling the gateway, which can be resource-intensive.
  • Expertise requirement: Requires a team with deep expertise in API management, security, and infrastructure.
  • Longer time to market: Development and testing can be time-consuming, delaying deployment and potentially missing market opportunities.

Paying for an API Gateway

• Pros:
  • Rapid deployment: Ready-to-use solutions that can be deployed quickly, accelerating time to market.
  • Ongoing support and updates: Continuous updates, support, and new feature releases handled by the provider.
  • Scalability: Proven scalability with managed services, capable of handling large volumes of traffic without additional overhead.
  • Lower operational overhead: Reduced burden on internal teams for maintenance, allowing them to focus on core business activities.
• Cons: 
  • Recurring costs: Ongoing subscription or licensing fees, which can accumulate over time.
  • Vendor lock-in: Dependency on a third-party provider, which can pose risks if the vendor's direction or policies change.
  • Limited customization: Customization is often restricted to the features and configurations provided by the vendor.
  • Data privacy concerns: Potential concerns about data privacy and control when using third-party services.

As mentioned above, the decision to build your own gateway or buy one just depends on what your organization needs are and what resources you have available to you. Here’s a generalized breakdown of which choice is best suited to which use case:

Best suited for building your own API gateway

• Large enterprises with specialized needs: Organizations with unique requirements that off-the-shelf solutions cannot meet.
• Companies with adequate resources: Teams with the financial and human resources to support development and ongoing maintenance.
• Security-sensitive industries: Sectors like finance or healthcare, where stringent security and compliance requirements necessitate tailored solutions.
• Long-term cost consideration: Businesses looking to minimize long-term operational costs, albeit with higher initial investments.

Best suited for paying for an API gateway

• Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): Companies that need to rapidly deploy API solutions without the overhead of building and maintaining them.
• Startups and growing businesses: Organizations that prioritize speed to market and scalability to support growth.
• Resource-constrained teams: Companies lacking the internal expertise or resources to develop and maintain a custom API gateway.
• Businesses seeking reliability and support: Firms that value the reliability, support, and continuous improvements offered by established API gateway providers.

Of course, that’s not to say that large enterprises don’t purchase API gateways. There are plenty of reasons for any large, medium, or small business to want to implement an API management solution (which would include a gateway) – it just depends on the use cases. It’s also very common that one business has multiple teams that are each using their own API gateway solution (some third-party and some in-house). 

So, let’s assume that you’re still in the process of deciding whether you want to build your own or choose a vendor. Knowing the pricing models of each offering might be a good start! That’s why we’ve done the research for you. Below is an in-depth look at the pricing models for each of the aforementioned API Gateways.

AWS API Gateway Pricing

AWS API Gateway offers pricing that is gated along both usage and features. They have specific usage-based rates based on whether you use the Gateway to create HTTP proxy APIs, REST APIs, and/or WebSocket APIs. Their pricing is pretty complex (to the point where many people have developed cost calculators to help predict costs), but here’s a high level look at how their pricing works per API type:

• HTTP APIs (API calls): Depending on which region you want to use, you will be charged a certain rate per every million API calls/month
• REST APIs (API calls): Depending on which region you want to use, you will be charged a certain rate per every million API calls/month
• REST APIs (caching): You will pay a certain price per hour, based on the memory size of your Cache
• WebSocket APIs (message transfers): AWS charges a certain amount per billion WebSocket message transfers per month
• WebSocket APIs (connection minutes): AWS API Gateway charges a certain amount per million connection minutes per month
• AWS API Gateway charges for Gateway logic (policies, in Gravitee lingo), as this is typically done via Lambda functions, and you pay per execution for functions
• AWS charges for external data transfers based on the EC2 data transfer rate
• No support for event APIs

Our general take is that AWS API Gateway might work for use cases when:

• AWS is the only cloud provider being used
• API consumption is very low
• There is no need for a Developer Portal (i.e. self-service API catalog)
• You don't need a feature-rich API Gateway solution (more information on what we mean here)

The second bullet is incredibly important. If your organization expects high levels of API traffic, you might find that a subscription-based model could potentially save you millions of dollars. 

See how AWS API Gateway pricing compares to Gravitee here.

Kong API Gateway Pricing

Kong offers two tiers for their API Gateway and API Management offering: Plus and Enterprise. Because Kong pricing and feature availability differ across these two Kong pricing tiers, we’ll split it up based on tiers. 

“Plus” tier: 

• Charges per 1 million API requests – $20/1 million API requests (includes analytics)
• Charges per Gateway service per month, in addition to API requests.
• Kong API Gateway pricing offers a number of free plugins, all of which are included in the Plus tier.
• Paid plugins cost $5/month per instance.
• Premium plugins cost $10/month per instance.
• $299/month per Developer Portal
• $10/month per published API product version in the Developer Portal

“Enterprise” tier:

• API call “volume discounts” for enterprise tier customers
• Includes all free plugins
• Includes all paid plugins
• Includes all premium plugins
• No additional charge for Developer Portal
• No additional charge for API product version
• No additional charge for analytics

Our general take is that Kong API Gateway might work well for use cases when you need both a paid API Gateway and Service Mesh offering from a single vendor. 

See how Kong API Gateway pricing compares to Gravitee here.

Apigee API Gateway Pricing

Apigee offers both consumption-based pricing and subscription pricing tiers, both of which are detailed below:

Usage-based pricing:

• Charges based on usage of environments
• Charged per # of API proxies
• API analytics charged as add-on
• Advanced API security charged as an add-on
• Charged based on consumption of Google Cloud’s network infrastructure (the new version of Apigee forces you to deploy on GCP)
• No API monetization functionality

Because you aren't committing any spend up-front and are instead spending based on consumption (although there are also add-ons), this package is best for organizations that want to "manage their own costs and scale" in line with their growth. 

One thing to note about this package is that it does not allow you to deploy Apigee in a hybrid manner. Instead, you will have to use Apigee products that are hosted in Apigee's GCP cloud environment. If you want to self-host any of your API Management infrastructure, you must pay the subscription-based pricing. However, even if you choose this option, you will be limited to using private GCP cloud tooling if you want to self-host any of the newest Apigee versions' products, as these products are vendor-locked and tied to Google Cloud.

Subscription-based pricing:

• Three tiers: standard, enterprise, enterprise plus
• Each package comes with a set # of API calls
• Each package comes with a limited # of environments
• Each package comes with a limited # of API proxy deployments
• Each package comes with a limited # of API calls for which you can gather analytics
• Advanced API security is charged as an add-on
• API monetization functionality is charged as an add-on

Apigee claims that its subscription-based pricing is best for organizations interested in "Predictable costs." If you already know what API consumption and Apigee usage look like, this package may make more sense for your organization. This package is also better for organizations that are looking to monetize their APIs, as API monetization functionality is only sold as an add-on for these packages. 

Unlike the pay-as-you-go pricing, Apigee offers hybrid deployment options for subscription Apigee pricing users. Still, you will be limited to hosting the newest version of Apigee on private GCP instances. 

See how Apigee API Gateway pricing compares to Gravitee here.

Tyk API Gateway Pricing

Tyk offers different pricing options for Tyk Cloud and self-managed implementations of Tyk. Within Tyk API Management pricing for Tyk Cloud, there are three tiers: Starter, Launch, and Enterprise. As of June 2024, each costs the following per month:

• Tyk Starter: $600/month
• Tyk Launch: $2,500/month
• Tyk Enterprise: “Contact us”

Each tier above has available add-ons, from $500-$1500/month

The prices for their self-managed offerings are not made public (as of June 2024) and require you to reach out to the Tyk team. There are three tiers within the self-managed category:

• Launch
• Flex
• Global multi-team

Here’s how pricing for Tyk Cloud works:

• Charged monthly per multiple millions of API calls (the number of API calls and costs depend on which of the Tyk Cloud pricing tiers you choose)
• Charged monthly per amount of throughput (the amount depends on which of the Tyk Cloud pricing tiers you choose)
• In Starter package, you’re limited to 5 APIs managed (unlimited in other tiers)
• Charged per region that you’re deployed
• Charged per environment (“an environment is a single grouping of control plane and gateways within the region representing your development lifecycle”)
• Limited # of teams that can use Tyk Cloud (“a team is a sub-group within an organization that consists of users with assigned roles and permissions, managing deployment activities and other operations within Tyk Cloud”)
• Developer portal included in all tiers

As for self-managed, here is how pricing works:

• Limited number of licensed environments in the self-managed hosting model; 2 in launch tier and 3 in flex/global multi-team tiers
• Limited number of gateways that can be managed per environment: 2 in launch and unspecified in flex/global tiers
• Custom plugin development is available across all tiers
• Developer portal included in all tiers
• No limit to # of calls, users, or APIs

Our general take is that Tyk API Gateway might work well for use cases when you need an API Management solution that is heavily focused on GraphQL use cases. Still, their emphasis on GraphQL seems to be slowing, as opposed to other solutions that are adding more and more GraphQL support on top of other FLAPIM functionality. 

Tyk pricing gets pretty complicated and granular in their Tyk Cloud offering, penalizing teams for API consumption, users, and API creation.

See how Tyk API Gateway pricing compares to Gravitee here.

Gravitee API Gateway Pricing

Gravitee (as of June 2024) primarily charges on a per-Gateway basis and does not have different rates based on the type of API. There are three pricing tiers (excluding a free, open-source product): Planet, Galaxy, and Universe. 

Here’s a general breakdown of how Gravitee pricing works:

• Gravitee typically charges per Gateway and is not based solely on API transactions and throughput (however, we can be flexible if needed; let us know!)
• Each package comes with a number of Gateways with unlimited environments and unlimited API proxy deployments.
• No additional charge for analytics
• No additional charge for a Developer Portal (with unlimited APIs and API versions)
• No additional charge for event API support
• Dozens of free plugins for all tiers
• Paid plugins are included in certain tiers (Universe comes with all of them)

Due to our flexible pricing, Gravitee has been able to save customers thousands of dollars in comparison to other API Gateways. Book a free consultation with a Gravitee engineer to learn more about our pricing philosophy, migrating from your existing API Gateway (if applicable), or just to see a demo. 

Building your own API Gateway

Of course, as we already mentioned, sometimes building your own API Gateway is the right decision for your use case. While we can’t provide specific numbers on how much that would cost, we can highlight the cost factors to be considered when building an API Gateway yourself: 

• Development costs
  • Personnel: salaries for software engineers, architects, and project managers
  • Time: duration of the development process, including design, coding, testing, and deployment
• Infrastructure costs
  • Hardware: servers, networking equipment, and other physical infrastructure
  • Cloud services: costs for cloud computing resources if hosted on platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Software and tools
  • Licenses: costs for development tools, libraries, and third-party software
  • DevOps tools: CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and logging
• Security
  • Implementation: costs to develop and integrate security features like authentication, authorization, and encryption
  • Compliance: ensuring compliance with relevant standards and regulations
• Training and documentation:
  • Training: training for internal teams on the new system
  • Documentation: creating comprehensive documentation for developers and users

Building the API Gateway yourself does require significant initial investment (and some ongoing costs for infrastructure, training, etc). But if you have the time and resources for it, building your own gateway is perfect for you if you’ve got very specific needs and want to customize it to your organization. Otherwise, as we’ve already seen, there are plenty of options out there for you!

Now that we’ve covered how API Gateways work, which popular vendors are out there, and how they’re priced, it’s up to you to decide which option is the best fit for you! If you need any help with that, we’re happy to chat. Just book a time with us here. 

As a reminder, you can explore API Gateway pricing comparison pages below:

• Pricing AWS vs. Gravitee
• Pricing Kong vs. Gravitee
• Pricing Apigee vs. Gravitee
• Pricing Tyk vs. Gravitee