APIs address a crucial need for businesses. How do you provide gated access to data from the organization to a third-party or enable them to use certain services without revealing the underlying software platform?
An API or application programming interface is what makes it happen. APIs are the interface that define the interaction between different software intermediaries. Depending on their needs, businesses can create as many APIs as they want.
However, that then presents its own set of challenges. How do you keep an eye on all of the APIs that connect your apps and data across clouds?
Getting the most value out of an API program can be challenging for businesses, but there are solutions available that take the pain out of this.
What are API management tools?
API management tools enable companies to design, publish, document, and analyze APIs in a secure environment. They serve as a one-stop solution for API design and analytics as well as act as a gateway for all APIs by enforcing API security policies.
There are a whole host of API management tools on offer. That’s a good thing because there’s no one size fits all solution here. Businesses can choose from one of the many options available to them in order to select the one that suits their needs the most.
- Apigee
Part of Google Cloud, Apigee is a robust API management tool that was recently recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management for the fifth consecutive time.
It supports multi and hybrid-cloud deployments, allowing organizations to design, secure, publish, monitor, and monetize their APIs.
Price: Apigee's Evaluation plan is free. Custom pricing is offered for Standard, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus plans on application.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid.
Typically used for: Monetization tools, cloud, partner, consumer, and employee apps in addition to IoT and systems of record. It also allows developers to manage microservices.
Business size: Small, medium, and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Lets developers build and deliver apps on their own, provides enhanced analytics that helps them keep an eye on API traffic and measure KPIs. - Akana
Akana bills itself as the "most secure solution" for creating and publishing APIs. It provides an end-to-end solution for designing, implementing, securing, monitoring, and publishing APIs.
Price: Free 30-day trial. Price on application.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid.
Typically used for: Lifecycle management
Business size: Enterprise
Developer Portal: Yes
Key Features: Provides DevOps integration, flexible deployment options, and API analytics. - IBM API Connect
IBM API Connect is a scalable and intuitive API platform with a particular focus on security. It's built on the IBM DataPower Gateway to provide a single, encrypted gateway to reduce cybersecurity risks.
Price: Free for Lite plan. $100 per 100K API calls per month on Enterprise. Custom contracts for more advanced use cases.
Delivery: Proxy and Agent.
Typically used for: Managing total API lifecycle.
Business size: Enterprise
Developer Portal: Yes
Key Features: Provides automated tools for API creation, self-service developer portal, API testing and monitoring without coding, multi-cloud support. - 3scale
3scale by Red Hat provides scalable and flexible solutions for organizations of all sizes. The platform allows for full control and distribution of each API on an infrastructure. Self-service plans allow users to run a full scale API program easily.
Price: $750 per month for Pro plan with up to 500,000 API calls per day. Custom pricing for the Enterprise plan.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid.
Typically used for: Sharing, securing, distributing, controlling, and monetizing APIs.
Business size: Startups, medium and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes
Key Features: API program tools allow access control, rate limits, analytics, security, and more. Supports multiple options for traffic control such as hosted cloud service and open source gateways. - Kong Enterprise
Kong Gateway's unique selling point is that it's an open source API gateway that's built for the multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It's further optimized for microservices and distributed architectures.
Price: Free
Delivery: Proxy
Typically used for: Invoking serverless functions with APIs, monitoring and inspecting API traffic, and authentication.
Business size: Startups, medium and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: No
Key Features: Traffic control, analytics, authentication, transformations, and logging. - MuleSoft Anypoint
MuleSoft Anypoint enables developers to use reusable assets for building APIs and integrations with clicks or code. This can be done through a web interface or desktop IDE. The hybrid integration platform allows for on-prem, on cloud, or a hybrid deployment.
Price: Free trial available. Pricing varies based on use case for the Gold, Platinum, and Titanium tiers.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid.
Typically used for: API lifecycle management.
Business size: Startups, medium and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Design, test, and publish APIs quickly. Manage, monitor, and analyze usage in addition to controlling access and protecting sensitive data. - Dell Boomi
Boomi allows for the management of the full lifecycle of APIs in a hybrid environment. APIs can be configured and real-time integrations can be exposed seamlessly. Usage dashboards allow developers to monitor the health of APIs.
Price: Free trial offered, custom pricing thereafter.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid.
Typically used for: Full lifecycle management.
Business size: Medium and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Rapidly create and publish any endpoint as an API, control data access, real-time engagement, and centralized lifecycle management. - WSO2 API Cloud
WSO2 API Cloud is the public hosted version of WSO2's open-source API Manager. Enterprises can use it to quickly share business capabilities with customers and partners. WSO2 API Cloud allows for effective scaling up when required.
Price: Free trial available. Starting at $500 per month if billed annually with 20 million API calls. Custom pricing for 100 million+ API calls per month.
Delivery: Hybrid.
Typically used for: Developer portals and admin interfaces.
Business size: Startups, medium, and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Multiple gateway locations, interactive API console, self sign-up, detailed statistics related to deployed APIs. - Azure API Management
Microsoft's Azure provides unified API management, allowing enterprises to adopt API architectures that increase growth. Azure API Management can be used to streamline APIs across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a single management plane for all APIs.
Price: Pricing starts at $4.20 per million calls for the Consumption tier. It increases to $0.07, $0.21, $0.95 and $3.89/hour thereafter for non-production, entry-level, medium-volume, and high-volume use cases respectively.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid
Typically used for: Full life cycle API management
Business size: Startups, medium, and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: - Automate
Automate is Broadcom's API management service that provides organizations with the speed and security that they need to create an agile business. The tools that it provides enable them to bring enterprise data to life at every stage of the life cycle. The low-code development platform enables developers to quickly launch new apps and integrations.
Price: Free trial is offered for 30 days. The Essentials plan is priced at $1700 per month with custom pricing being offered for the Enterprise plan.
Delivery: Proxy, Agent, and Hybrid
Typically used for: Full lifecycle API management
Business size: Startups, medium, and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Live API creator enables developers to create microservices in minutes. Design, apply logic, and expose enterprise-class API up to 10x faster than conventional coding. Provides business agility and increases development speed with a container-based microservice architecture. - Oracle API Platform
Oracle also offers an API management solution through its API Platform. It supports agile development of your application programming interface and also makes it easy to keep an eye on KPIs. It promises true hybrid API development on any cloud and on-premises infrastructure with the most up-to-date security protocols.
Price: Oracle API Platform pricing starts at $1.0753 gateway per hour. It also provides non-metered services, The API Platform Cloud Service Gateway Subscription is priced at $1,500 per month and offers 25 million API calls per month.
Delivery: Hybrid
Typically used for: API lifecycle management.
Business size: Medium and large-scale enterprises.
Developer Portal: Yes.
Key Features: Improved security, increased agility, and greater visibility. Developers can choose API Blueprint or Swagger to design the API and quickly onboard the team with role-based access control over API documents for Admins, Editors, and Viewers.
Don’t know which API Management Tool to use?
We get it. It’s easy to get confused by all of these different API management tools. How do you decide which one is the best for you?
Each tool has its own areas of strength. Some are highly capable but also very expensive to use while others are better suited to select use cases and are also more attainable for startups.
Don’t get weighed down by all of these options. Contact Zibtek today for a consultation.
Our team will be happy to work with you to understand the needs of your business and guide you in the right direction. We can then work with you to leverage these API management tools to get the most out of them.