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Azure API Management VS Azure Traffic Manager

Compare Azure API Management VS Azure Traffic Manager and see what are their differences

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Azure API Management logo Azure API Management

Microsoft Azure API Management enables user to create consistent and modern API gateways for existing back-end services hosted anywhere, secure and protect them from abuse and overuse, and get insights into usage and health.

Azure Traffic Manager logo Azure Traffic Manager

Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager allows you to control the distribution of user traffic for service endpoints in different datacenters.
  • Azure API Management Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-19
  • Azure Traffic Manager Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-26

Azure API Management features and specs

  • Comprehensive API Gateway
    Azure API Management offers a robust API gateway that helps in managing, securing, and analyzing APIs effectively. It supports complex policies, rate limiting, IP restrictions, and transformation of requests and responses.
  • Seamless Integration
    It seamlessly integrates with other Azure services like Azure Functions, App Services, and Logic Apps, streamlining workflows and enhancing functionality.
  • Developer Portal
    Comes with a customizable developer portal that enables easy onboarding and interactive documentation, improving developer experience and speeding up API adoption.
  • Multi-Region Deployment
    Supports multi-region deployments, ensuring high availability and low latency by replicating APIs across different geographic regions.
  • Scalability
    Azure API Management scales easily to meet the demand, allowing businesses to start small and grow with their customer base without worrying about infrastructure management.
  • Security Features
    Offers advanced security features such as OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and JWT token validation to ensure secure API access.
  • Analytics and Monitoring
    Provides comprehensive analytics and monitoring capabilities that help in tracking performance, usage patterns, and diagnosing issues quickly.

Possible disadvantages of Azure API Management

  • Cost
    Azure API Management can be expensive, especially for small businesses or startups. The cost can quickly ramp up with increased usage and advanced features.
  • Complexity
    The service can be complex to configure and manage, particularly for users who are not familiar with Azure services or API management concepts.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a steep learning curve associated with Azure API Management. It requires significant time and effort to become proficient in using and optimizing its features.
  • Dependency on Azure
    Heavily depends on the Azure ecosystem, which can be a limitation for organizations using a multi-cloud strategy or preferring other cloud providers.
  • Performance Overhead
    Introducing an API gateway can add some performance overhead, potentially affecting latency and response times if not properly optimized.
  • Limited Customization
    While it offers a range of features, some businesses may find the customization options limited compared to building an in-house solution tailored to specific requirements.

Azure Traffic Manager features and specs

  • Geographic Distribution
    Azure Traffic Manager allows for distributing traffic based on geographic location, which can improve load balancing and reduce latency for users by directing them to the closest endpoint.
  • Automatic Failover
    Provides automatic failover capabilities to ensure high availability by redirecting traffic to another endpoint if one goes down, improving service reliability.
  • Traffic Routing Methods
    Supports various routing methods such as priority, weighted, performance, and geographic, offering flexibility in controlling how traffic is distributed.
  • Integration with Azure Services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft Azure services, making it easier to implement and manage for organizations already using Azure.
  • Scalability
    Scales automatically to handle the demands of high-volume applications without requiring manual intervention, providing better performance management.
  • Customizable Health Probes
    Allows users to set up customizable health probes to continuously monitor the health of endpoints, ensuring traffic is directed based on endpoint availability.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Traffic Manager

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring Azure Traffic Manager can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with Azure or network configurations.
  • Dependency on External Services
    As a cloud-based service, it is dependent on Azure infrastructure. Any issues within Azure could potentially impact Traffic Manager performance.
  • Cost
    While Traffic Manager can optimize performance, it can also increase costs, particularly for smaller businesses or those with fluctuating traffic patterns.
  • Limited Control Over Underlying Infrastructure
    Users have limited control over the underlying Azure infrastructure, which can be a disadvantage for those who require more granular control.
  • Potential Latency
    While Traffic Manager can reduce latency by routing to nearby endpoints, the initial DNS query routing might introduce some latency.

Azure API Management videos

Getting Started with Microsoft Azure API Management REST API

More videos:

  • Review - Using Products in Microsoft Azure API Management

Azure Traffic Manager videos

Azure Traffic Manager Vlog 1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure API Management and Azure Traffic Manager)
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web And Application Servers
APIs
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Azure API Management and Azure Traffic Manager

Azure API Management Reviews

Top 10 Best API Management Tools with Feature Comparison
Using Microsoft Azure API management platform, you will be able to manage all your APIs at one place. It will provide you a token, key, and IP filtering functionalities to secure your APIs. You will get insights through API analytics.

Azure Traffic Manager Reviews

We have no reviews of Azure Traffic Manager yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Azure API Management seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 8 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.

Azure API Management mentions (8)

  • 10 Lightweight API Gateways for Your Next Project
    Azure API Management is Microsoft's managed API gateway, offering request routing, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection. It supports both fully managed and self-hosted gateway deployments for hybrid or on-prem environments. - Source: dev.to / 10 days ago
  • Serverless Security Best Practices
    Moreover, integrating rate limiting can thwart DDoS attacks, and schema validation can prevent malformed requests, ensuring only legitimate and well-formed traffic reaches your serverless functions. Tools like Amazon API Gateway, Azure API Management, and Google Cloud Endpoints offer these capabilities, allowing you to set up custom authorization workflows and request validation rules that align with your security... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • No Token in the Browser Pattern using Azure API Management
    This pattern uses Azure API Management in a Backend for Frontend pattern where it handles the OAuth2 access token acquisition from Azure Active Directory; AES encryption and decryption of the access token into an HttpOnly cookie; and to proxy all API calls requiring authorization. This is performed by the use of Azure API Management Policies. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • How to choose the right API Gateway
    Because the configuration is a highly critical feature, we need to authenticate via an API key or by means of other auth methods. For example, most API Gateway providers such as Apache APISIX enabled token-based access to Admin API and they highly advise generating your own token and regularly changing it. Or Azure API Management relies on Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), which includes optional features such as... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Is auth WAY too hard in .NET?
    Check out https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/api-management/. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Azure Traffic Manager mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Azure Traffic Manager yet. Tracking of Azure Traffic Manager recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure API Management and Azure Traffic Manager, you can also consider the following products

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform - Anypoint Platform is a unified, highly productive, hybrid integration platform that creates an application network of apps, data and devices with API-led connectivity.

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

AWS Elastic Load Balancing - Amazon ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances in the cloud.

Apigee - Intelligent and complete API platform

Google Cloud Load Balancing - Google Cloud Load Balancer enables users to scale their applications on Google Compute Engine.