AWS WAF vs Amazon API Gateway: What are the differences?

Introduction

AWS WAF and Amazon API Gateway are two services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provide different functionalities for managing and securing web applications. Here are the key differences between AWS WAF and Amazon API Gateway:

1. Deployment and Integration Approach: AWS WAF is primarily a web application firewall service that integrates with Application Load Balancers (ALBs), CloudFront distributions, and Amazon API Gateway. It allows you to protect web applications at the HTTP and HTTPS protocol layers. On the other hand, Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that enables you to create, deploy, and manage APIs. It functions as a front-end to your backend services, allowing you to control access, implement security restrictions, and handle API traffic. While AWS WAF focuses on security, Amazon API Gateway focuses on API management.

2. Functionality: AWS WAF provides a set of rules and conditions to define how to handle web requests, such as blocking requests with malicious intent or excessive traffic. It offers protection against common web exploits, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Whereas, Amazon API Gateway primarily enables you to create RESTful APIs or WebSocket APIs, offering functionalities like request validation, transformation, and authorization. It can also handle tasks like request and response mappings, caching, and throttling.

3. Scalability: AWS WAF is designed to scale automatically to handle high traffic volumes and distributed attacks. It can distribute the workload across multiple AWS Availability Zones and automatically scales up to handle incoming requests efficiently. In contrast, Amazon API Gateway also provides automatic scaling capabilities, allowing you to handle a high number of API requests across multiple availability zones. It scales based on the demands of the incoming API traffic.

4. Pricing: AWS WAF offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you are charged based on the number of web requests processed, rules applied, and data processed. The cost varies depending on the region and the scale of your applications. Amazon API Gateway also uses the pay-as-you-go pricing model, but it is based on the number of API calls, data transfer, caching, and other associated features. The pricing for Amazon API Gateway also varies based on the AWS region and the usage patterns.

5. Logging and Monitoring: AWS WAF provides detailed logging capabilities to monitor web requests, allowing you to analyze and identify potential threat patterns. It integrates with Amazon CloudWatch, which provides metrics, logs, and alarms for monitoring the performance and security of your applications. Amazon API Gateway also integrates with CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor API usage, error rates, latencies, and other performance metrics. It provides enhanced logging functionalities, enabling you to capture API-level logs that include information about the request and response payloads.

6. Integration with AWS Services: AWS WAF can integrate with other AWS services like AWS Shield for DDoS protection, AWS Lambda for custom security rules, and AWS Firewall Manager for centralized management across accounts and applications. Amazon API Gateway can integrate with various AWS services as well, such as AWS Lambda for serverless backend implementation, AWS IAM for authentication and authorization, AWS Cognito for user management, and AWS DynamoDB for data storage.

In summary, AWS WAF focuses on providing web application security features to protect against common web exploits and attacks, while Amazon API Gateway emphasizes API management capabilities, allowing you to create, deploy, and manage APIs with features like request validation, transformation, and authorization.