Prompt
I hate managing APIs in Apigee, what are people using instead?
Latest observation
A lot of teams move away from Apigee when they want something simpler to operate, cheaper, or more developer-friendly. What people use instead depends on why they dislike Apigee:
Common alternatives
1. Kong
- Popular API gateway, especially for self-managed or hybrid setups
- Good plugin ecosystem, strong performance
- Often chosen if people want more control and less “enterprise suite” overhead
2. NGINX / NGINX Plus
- Used as a lightweight API gateway / reverse proxy
- Good for basic routing, auth, rate limiting
- Popular when teams want something familiar and fast
3. AWS API Gateway
- Common if you’re already on AWS
- Managed and easy to integrate with Lambda, IAM, CloudWatch, etc.
- Less operational burden, but can get complex/costly at scale
4. Azure API Management
- The Azure equivalent for teams in Microsoft environments
- Good policy management, developer portal, and integration with Azure services
5. MuleSoft
- Often used in enterprise integration-heavy environments
- Strong for orchestration/integration, but can be just as heavyweight as Apigee
6. Tyk
- Lightweight-ish API management platform
- Good if you want open-source options and less vendor lock-in
7. WSO2 API Manager
- Strong open-source/enterprise hybrid option
- Useful if you want a more customizable stack
8. Envoy + custom tooling
- Some teams skip a full API management suite and use:
- Envoy / Kong / NGINX for gateway
- OAuth/JWT via IdP
- Observability via Prometheus/Grafana/Datadog
- CI/CD-managed config
- Popular with platform engineering teams that want less GUI-driven management
9. Cloudflare API Gateway / Workers
- For teams leaning into edge networking/security
- Great if you want global edge placement and WAF/CDN benefits
What people choose most often
If the goal is “less painful than Apigee”, the most common swaps are:
- Kong for flexibility and strong gateway features
- AWS API Gateway if you’re mostly in AWS
- NGINX/Envoy if you want something lean and code/config-driven
- Tyk if you want a simpler API management experience
Rule of thumb
- Need enterprise governance and a portal? Azure APIM, Kong Enterprise, MuleSoft, WSO2
- Need simple gatewaying? NGINX, Envoy, Kong
- Need fully managed cloud service? AWS API Gateway, Azure APIM
- Need open source / less lock-in? Tyk, Kong, WSO2
If you want, I can also give you a “best Apigee replacement by company type” cheat sheet:
- startup
- mid-size SaaS
- big enterprise
- AWS-native
- Kubernetes-native
Observation history
How did Obsurfable measure this prompt?
Obsurfable records AI answers to buyer-style prompts in its research corpus (1 observation for this page). Metrics are distributions over observations, not a single static ranking.
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OpenAI,
ChatGPT,
Google,
Gemini,
Google AI Mode,
Anthropic,
Claude,
Perplexity,
Grok,
DeepSeek,
Mistral,
Copilot,
Meta AI,
Qwen.
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