Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon API Gateway VS Amazon Web Services Lambda

Compare Amazon API Gateway VS Amazon Web Services Lambda and see what are their differences

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Amazon API Gateway logo Amazon API Gateway

Create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale

Amazon Web Services Lambda logo Amazon Web Services Lambda

Amazon Web Services Lambda is a platform for easy building of data processing triggers for AES services of all types.
  • Amazon API Gateway Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-12
  • Amazon Web Services Lambda Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-09

Amazon API Gateway features and specs

  • Scalability
    API Gateway automatically scales to handle the number of requests your API receives, ensuring high availability and reliability.
  • Ease of Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other AWS services like Lambda, DynamoDB, and IAM, enabling a cohesive environment for developing serverless applications.
  • Built-in Security
    Provides features such as IAM roles, API keys, and AWS WAF integration for safeguarding your APIs from potential threats.
  • Monitoring and Logging
    Supports CloudWatch integration for monitoring API requests and responses, helping you maintain observability and troubleshoot issues effectively.
  • Cost-Effective
    You only pay for the requests made to your APIs and the amount of data transferred out, making it a cost-effective solution for many use cases.
  • Caching
    Built-in caching at the API Gateway level can improve performance and reduce latency for frequently accessed data.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon API Gateway

  • Complexity in Configuration
    Setting up and managing API Gateway can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with AWS services and cloud infrastructure.
  • Cold Start Latency
    When integrated with AWS Lambda, cold starts can introduce latency which can affect the performance of your API.
  • Cost for High Throughput
    While cost-effective for low to moderate usage, the costs can escalate with high throughput and large data transfers.
  • Debugging Issues
    Diagnosis can be complicated due to the multi-tenant nature of the service and the need to dive into multiple AWS logs and services.
  • Limited Customization
    There might be constraints regarding customizations and fine-tuning your APIs compared to self-hosting solutions.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Dependence on AWS infrastructure can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to other cloud providers or solutions.

Amazon Web Services Lambda features and specs

  • Scalability
    AWS Lambda automatically scales your application by running your code in response to each trigger, handling scaling from a few requests per day to thousands per second.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Lambda charges you only for the compute time you consume, without the need to pay for idle server time, which helps optimize cost efficiency.
  • No Server Management
    You don't have to manage any servers or infrastructure, allowing you to focus on writing code and developing functionality rather than maintaining hardware.
  • Event-driven Model
    Lambda integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and can be triggered using AWS events, making it highly suitable for building event-driven and serverless architectures.
  • Flexible Scaling and Processing
    AWS Lambda provides flexibility in resource allocation, allowing you to adjust memory and execution timings to optimize performance for different workloads.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Web Services Lambda

  • Cold Start Latency
    The first invocation of a Lambda function can experience a delay known as 'cold start,' which can affect applications sensitive to latency.
  • Execution Timeout
    Lambda functions have a maximum execution timeout of 15 minutes, which may not be suitable for long-running processes or tasks.
  • Resource Limitations
    Lambda has limitations on memory, disk space, and other resources, which can restrict the functions it can perform depending on application requirements.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using AWS Lambda heavily can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to different platforms without significant re-architecting.
  • Complexity in Large Systems
    For large systems with numerous functions and dependencies, managing and orchestrating Lambda functions can become complex and challenging.

Amazon API Gateway videos

Building APIs with Amazon API Gateway

More videos:

  • Review - Create API using AWS API Gateway service - Amazon API Gateway p1

Amazon Web Services Lambda videos

No Amazon Web Services Lambda videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon API Gateway and Amazon Web Services Lambda)
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Development
0 0%
100% 100
APIs
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
76 76%
24% 24

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon API Gateway should be more popular than Amazon Web Services Lambda. It has been mentiond 107 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon API Gateway mentions (107)

  • 10 Lightweight API Gateways for Your Next Project
    AWS API Gateway is Amazon’s managed gateway service, designed to work seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem. It supports both REST and WebSocket APIs, with HTTP APIs being the lightweight, lower-cost option for simple proxying and routing use cases. - Source: dev.to / 6 days ago
  • 4 Cognito User Pools features you might not know about
    This opens up a world of customization options for controlling app access. For example, we can embed custom data in the ID token for the front-end client to use, enabling guards to restrict content. Alternatively, we can add custom scopes to the access token and implement fine-grained access control in an API Gateway API. All it takes is some Lambda function code, and Cognito triggers it at the right time. - Source: dev.to / 26 days ago
  • Verifying Cognito access tokens - Comparing three JWT packages for Lambda authorizers
    When the built-in Amazon API Gateway authorization methods don’t fully meet our needs, we can set up Lambda authorizers to manage the access control process. Even when using Cognito user pools and Cognito access tokens, there may still be a need for custom authorization logic. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Implementing advanced authorization with AWS Lambda for endpoint-specific access
    The API Gateway includes an endpoint structured like this:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Turning APIs into Revenue: Passive Income Strategies for Developers
    Amazon Web Services exemplifies this approach with automatic volume discounts that encourage increased usage while maximizing revenue at each consumption level. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

Amazon Web Services Lambda mentions (49)

  • 4 Cognito User Pools features you might not know about
    We can set up Cognito to trigger a Lambda function at various stages of the sign-up and sign-in processes. These functions can enrich both the ID token and the access token. - Source: dev.to / 26 days ago
  • Building a Real-Time Serverless Chat App with AWS: A Scalable Approach
    You will learn the following in this lesson: Learn how to set up AWS AppSync to handle messages in real time. This article explains how to store messages in DynamoDB, a NoSQL database that can grow as needed. This article explains how to use AWS Lambda to build your own business code. This article explains how to use React to make a simple front end that talks to the chat back end. By the end of this... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Stop bringing old practices to the cloud
    This is often due to a lack of training and knowledge about cloud-native services or capabilities. Many legacy workloads were built on top of 3-tier architecture since this was the common way most IT/developers knew for many years. Architectures were centralized and monolithic, and organizations had to consider scale, and deploy enough compute resources, many times in advance, failing to predict spikes in... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Parameter Management at Scale: How Multi-Region Configurations Saved My Application
    Without going into details, I enable versioning when I use Lambda. Each version makes the Lambda immutable, ensuring that code and configuration do not change once published. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Time to move on to Day 2 cloud operations
    On Day 1, it may be ok to take traditional architectures (such as manually maintaining VMs), but on Day 2 it is time to take the full benefit of cloud-native services. The easiest way is to replace any manual maintenance of infrastructure with managed services – in most cases, switching to a managed database, storage, or even load-balancers and API gateways, will provide a lot of benefits (such as lower... - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon API Gateway and Amazon Web Services Lambda, you can also consider the following products

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Go Programming Language - Go, also called golang, is a programming language initially developed at Google in 2007 by Robert...

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

AWS Secrets Manager - AWS Secrets Manager to Rotate, Manage, Retrieve Secrets

Apigee - Intelligent and complete API platform

Azure Kubernetes Service - Learn the features and benefits of Azure Kubernetes Service to deploy and manage container-based applications in Azure.