# API Management Overview

API Management - the art of funnelling traffic from an API client through to the background service and taking care of things like authentication, rate-limiting, logging, auditing etc.

There are lots of solutions out there - both FOSS and commercial.

### Google Solutions

Google have three solutions that [they discuss on their cloud platform docs](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-modernization/choosing-between-apigee-api-gateway-and-cloud-endpoints) site ([mirror](https://archive.jamesravey.me/archive/1669041790.953187/singlefile.html)):

- ApiGee - looks like the super expensive enterprisey option not really an option for new products
- API Gateway - seems to just provide a gateway that allows the internet to
- Cloud Gateway - seems to be a really customisable/complex version of API Gateway[![A flowchat describing the use cases in which you should use each product](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/uploads/images/gallery/2022-11/scaled-1680-/t5Ximage.png)](https://wiki.jamesravey.me/uploads/images/gallery/2022-11/t5Ximage.png)

Seems like API Gateway might be useful if you are running cloud functions. Apigee is SOO SOO expensive - it starts at $700/month.

### FOSS Solutions

Started exploring from [this list ](https://appinventiv.com/blog/open-source-api-management-tools/)([mirror](https://archive.jamesravey.me/archive/1669043105.483893/singlefile.html)) :

- Looked at API Umbrella - it seems like they haven't; made any releases since 2019 and I'm not sure how maintained it is so staying away for now.
- Started playing with Kong Gateway - it is lightweight, stores data in Postgres and looks easy to use with docker-compose.