Amazon API Gateway vs Apigility vs Kong: What are the differences?

1. Integration Level: Amazon API Gateway is more tightly integrated with AWS services, providing seamless integration with Lambda functions, DynamoDB, and other AWS resources. Apigility, on the other hand, is more framework-agnostic and can be used with various PHP frameworks. Kong offers a flexible and platform-agnostic solution, allowing integration with any backend service or API.

2. API Monitoring and Analytics: Amazon API Gateway and Kong offer built-in monitoring and analytics capabilities, providing detailed insights into API usage, performance, and errors. Apigility, while it offers logging and monitoring features, may require additional tooling for in-depth analytics and monitoring.

3. Authentication and Authorization: Amazon API Gateway provides robust authentication and authorization mechanisms, including AWS IAM roles and policies. Apigility offers authentication plugins for standard protocols like OAuth, JWT, and basic authentication. Kong excels in its support for various authentication plugins, allowing easy integration with OAuth, JWT, Key authentication, etc.

4. Deployment Flexibility: Amazon API Gateway is fully managed by AWS, offering ease of deployment and scaling. Apigility can be deployed on any PHP server, providing flexibility in deployment environments. Kong, being open-source, gives users the freedom to deploy it on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.

5. API Rate Limiting and Throttling: Amazon API Gateway and Kong provide rate limiting and throttling controls out of the box, allowing users to manage API traffic effectively. Apigility, while it supports rate limiting, may require additional configuration or plugins for advanced throttling capabilities.

6. Community Support and Ecosystem: Apigility has a strong community support system and a variety of plugins and modules available, making it easier for developers to extend and customize their APIs. Amazon API Gateway benefits from the vast AWS ecosystem, providing seamless integration with various AWS services. Kong, being open-source, has a vibrant community contributing plugins, integrations, and resources to enhance its capabilities.

In Summary, Amazon API Gateway, Apigility, and Kong offer unique strengths in integration, monitoring, deployment, authentication, and rate limiting for API management solutions.