Hey everyone! My organization is thinking about switching from our self-hosted Spring Cloud API Gateway to AWS API Gateway, and I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has made a similar move. What challenges did you face, any pitfalls to watch out for? Tips, tutorials, or resource recommendations would also be greatly appreciated.
From my past experiences with Kubernetes-based API gateways, I feel like AWS API Gateway could improve in terms of development experience and flexibility. In particular, I find the requirements for OpenAPI spec generation and authorization quite complex, especially since I already manage my own API keys while AWS has its own restrictions. Thanks for your insights!
3 Answers
I’ve found that AWS API Gateway shines in specific scenarios, like simple proxy tasks or fully serverless setups. However, I've seen it struggle when integrated with existing applications. For instance, I set it up to authenticate a Grafana instance, but it couldn’t handle the webhooks needed for functionality, and we ended up having to disable them. Have you considered using CloudFront instead? What makes you lean towards API Gateway?
If you're sharing APIs with other developers—internally or externally—a clear advantage of AWS API Gateway is its support for OpenAPI and an integrated developer portal. We use a Lambda authorizer for managing auth and generating unique API keys per consumer. If your usage is more straightforward, something like CloudFront could be a simpler solution, as KingJulien pointed out.
We’ve been using AWS API Gateway for over a decade for both public and private APIs. Honestly, it has improved a lot over the years, and I can’t imagine going back to self-hosting or commercial off-the-shelf solutions unless absolutely necessary.
What do you mean by "couldn’t handle the webhooks"?