AA
AWS API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed AWS service for creating, publishing, maintaining, monitoring, and securing APIs at any scale.
Our verdict
Who it's for
Build, secure, and scale APIs with REST, HTTP, and WebSocket support
Who should look elsewhere
Vendor lock-in to AWS ecosystem
Pros
- +Fully managed, no infrastructure to maintain
- +Native integration with Lambda, DynamoDB, and other AWS services
- +Free tier includes 1M API calls/month for 12 months
- +HTTP APIs offer significant cost savings for simple use cases
- +Global edge network reduces latency
Cons
- −Vendor lock-in to AWS ecosystem
- −Pricing complexity across REST vs HTTP vs WebSocket
- −29-second timeout limit on API calls
- −Cold start latency when paired with Lambda
- −REST API pricing ($3.50/M) is expensive at scale
Key features
- ✓REST, HTTP, and WebSocket API support
- ✓Automatic scaling to handle any traffic volume
- ✓Built-in authorization via IAM, Cognito, OAuth2, and Lambda
- ✓Traffic management with rate limiting and throttling
- ✓API versioning with multi-version deployment
- ✓CloudWatch monitoring dashboard
- ✓Edge-optimized deployment via CloudFront
- ✓API Portal for discovery and documentation
- ✓Request/response transformation
- ✓Pay-per-request pricing with no minimum fees
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| HTTP APIs (US East example) | $1 | month | $1.00 per million requests for the first 300 million; Then $0.90 per million (official example); Plus data transfer out |
| REST APIs (US East example) | $3.5 | month | $3.50 per million requests in the official US East examples; Plus $0.09/GB data transfer out; Private APIs: no data-out fee, PrivateLink still bills |
| WebSocket APIs | $1 | month | $1.00 per million messages; $0.25 per million connection minutes; Messages metered in 32 KB increments |
| Free Tier | $0 | month | 1M REST + 1M HTTP calls/month; 1M WebSocket messages + 750,000 connection minutes; First 12 months for new AWS accounts |