Prompt
I'm building a public API and need throttling, IP allowlists, and monitoring. What gateway should I compare?
Latest observation
For a public API that needs throttling, IP allowlists, and monitoring, you should compare an API gateway / API management product rather than a basic reverse proxy.
Good options to compare:
Open-source / self-managed
- Kong Gateway
- Strong rate limiting, IP restriction plugins, good observability
- Good if you want flexibility and plugin-based control
- NGINX Plus / NGINX OSS + modules
- Solid for IP allowlists and throttling
- Monitoring is less turnkey unless you add external tooling
- Tyk Gateway
- Built specifically for API management
- Good rate limiting, security policies, analytics
- KrakenD
- Lightweight, high performance
- Good for gateway needs, but less full-featured for policy/management than Kong/Tyk
- Apache APISIX
- Strong plugin ecosystem, rate limits, auth, IP filtering, metrics
- Worth comparing if you want cloud-native performance
Managed/cloud options
- AWS API Gateway
- Easy managed throttling, usage plans, logging, monitoring
- Good if you’re already in AWS
- Azure API Management
- Strong policy engine, IP filtering, analytics
- Google Apigee
- Very full-featured enterprise API management
- Cloudflare API Gateway / Cloudflare WAF + rate limiting
- Great edge protection and IP-based controls
- Often paired with another gateway for deeper API management
What to prioritize in your comparison
- Rate limiting / quota controls
- IP allowlist / denylist
- Authentication and authorization
- Request/response logging and analytics
- Developer portal / API key management if you plan to expose a public API
- Deployment model: self-hosted vs managed
- Latency and throughput
- Ease of policy configuration
Practical short list
If you want a focused comparison, I’d start with:
- Kong Gateway
- Tyk
- Apache APISIX
- AWS API Gateway if you want managed cloud
If you tell me your cloud provider, traffic volume, and whether you want self-hosted or managed, I can narrow it to the best 2–3 choices.
Observation history
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