Prompt
I'm building an API platform and need a gateway with monitoring and access control
Latest observation
A good API platform gateway with monitoring and access control can be built with either a managed API gateway or an open-source gateway depending on how much control you want.
Good options
1. Managed cloud gateways
Best if you want faster setup and less ops work.
- AWS API Gateway + CloudWatch + IAM/Cognito
- Azure API Management + Application Insights + Entra ID
- Google Cloud API Gateway / Apigee + Cloud Logging + IAM
Pros
- Built-in auth, throttling, quotas, logging
- Easy monitoring and alerting
- Scales automatically
Cons
- Can be expensive at scale
- Less flexible than self-hosted options
2. Open-source / self-hosted gateways
Best if you need more control, hybrid deployments, or want to avoid cloud lock-in.
- Kong Gateway
- Tyk
- Apache APISIX
- NGINX Plus / NGINX Open Source + custom tooling
Pros
- Flexible access control plugins
- Strong observability options
- Can run on-prem, Kubernetes, or cloud
Cons
- More operational overhead
- You manage upgrades, scaling, and monitoring stack
What to look for
Access control
You’ll want support for:
- OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect
- JWT validation
- API keys
- mTLS for service-to-service security
- RBAC / ABAC if you need role or attribute-based authorization
- Rate limiting / quotas to prevent abuse
Monitoring
Look for:
- Request/response metrics
- Latency and error tracking
- Distributed tracing
- Audit logs
- Dashboard integration with Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog, New Relic, or cloud-native tools
Recommended choices by use case
If you want the easiest enterprise setup
- Azure API Management or Apigee
If you want strong open-source flexibility
- Kong Gateway or Apache APISIX
If you’re heavily on Kubernetes
- Kong, APISIX, or Tyk with Prometheus + Grafana + OpenTelemetry
If you want simple cloud-native and minimal ops
- AWS API Gateway
A practical architecture
A common setup is:
- API Gateway
- Auth: OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, API keys
- Policy: rate limits, IP allow/deny, schema validation
- Monitoring stack
- Metrics: Prometheus
- Dashboards: Grafana
- Logs: ELK / OpenSearch
- Traces: OpenTelemetry + Jaeger/Tempo
- Identity provider
- Auth0, Keycloak, Okta, Azure AD, Cognito
My recommendation
If you want a balanced, production-ready choice:
- Kong Gateway + Keycloak + Prometheus/Grafana + OpenTelemetry
If you want fully managed:
- Azure API Management or AWS API Gateway
If you want, I can also help you with:
- a feature comparison table,
- a reference architecture, or
- a decision guide based on your stack.
Observation history
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