Top 22 API Management Platforms for 2023 and Beyond

1. Anypoint Platform – MuleSoft

Overview: Anypoint Platform accelerates API development, testing, distribution, documentation, and monitoring processes. An open-source and unified solution for API lifecycle management, Anypoint comes with a rich set of functionality to streamline complex project implementation and integrations of data across multiple systems.

What may interest you in Anypoint

• Anypoint Exchange: A vast range of assets, including application connectors and generic connectors, packaged integration patterns, and step-by-step guides for quick connectivity.
• DataWeave: It is a purpose-built data language built on the Mule runtime engine for querying and transforming data on Anypoint Platform and enabling template-driven approach to development.
• Configuring proxy for APIs: Configuring proxies becomes easy with intuitive user interface. You can directly deploy the proxy application to CloudHub or Anypoint Runtime Fabric, which is automatically tracked by API Manager.
• Enforcing Rate Limit Policy: Use developer portal to fetch the template of rate limiting policy, download the policy definition in Yaml file, and then use CURL to apply the policy. The entire process is simple and guided.

What may give you a hard time

Anypoint uses Eclipse based IDE which is heavy to load and sometimes causes crash or show error messages. Well, to avoid it, you need to remove the cache before starting the system, however that becomes a little annoying in the middle of the task. Also, While the platform is highly intuitive, the initial learning curve still looks steep, but once you get familiar with the tool, your search for the platform ends then and there.

2. Postman

Overview: Postman is a desktop application with a comprehensive range of API tools and repositories to manage the entire API lifecycle with ease. It acts as a unified platform for all your API artifacts used across teams.

What may interest you in Postman

• API Testing: Postman enables end-to-end API testing, including 3rd party APIs tests before you write your own client or debug the client operations. You can integrate automated testing into your CI/CD frameworks, create test suites in JavaScript in the Postman Sandbox, save requests in various collections and parameterize them, test the collections and view the results in real-time and share them with the team.
• Intuitive UI: The Developer interface is highly intuitive and simple to navigate. You can customize the interface to arrange data and optimize the elements based on what you want to view at the moment.
• Security: Postman’s API Builder allows you to get security alerts and notifications right during the design stage. You can identify potential security vulnerabilities even before you write code or deploy them in the cloud.

What may give you a hard time

Postman is a great product. Other than an occasional misbehavior during configurations or pulling a large volume of data, the product does exactly what it needs to do.

3. IBM API Connect

Overview: IBM API Connect is a full-cycle API management platform that provides infrastructure and tools to create, run, manage, and secure APIs across hybrid cloud environments. The platform offers automated, visual, and coding options to create scalable APIs, along with Node.js and Java support for microservices applications.

What may interest you in IBM Connect

• Rapid development: Use developer portal console to discover reusable APIs and their backed-data sources for faster API development. Also, IBM publishes excellent literature on its products that provide technical overview about their systems, integration, implementation, and operation to help you with API management.
• API Security: IBM security service features help you build a strong defence to mitigate the risks. Key features include TLS profile to secure inbound and outbound traffic and multilayer mutual authentication to ensure that connected application is trustworthy.
• API Analytics: Analysis of APIs with IBM API connect is an insightful process. You can filter, sort, and aggregate API event data and visualize the results in correlated formats such as charts, tables, and maps. Based on the results, you can set up security policies and controls, initiate quotas, and manage communities.

What may give you a hard time

Many users feel the initial setup and upgrades are slightly exhaustive with IBM API connect, especially when you have not engaged the integration specialists from the very beginning. Besides, it has two portals, which is a hindrance to unified experience.

4. Apigee Edge

Overview: Apigee API Management platform by Google is an all-in-one API design and management platform that comes with powerful tools for API development and deployment across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.

What may interest you in Apigee

• Centralized API (proxy) management: Its API proxy management tools enable easy integration with REST APIs and 3rd party APIs while applying quotas, rate limiting, and analytics for improved security and monitoring. You can also build applications in JavaScript and Java and host them on API services platform without any backend service.
• Apigee Edge: You can create and configure various types of API packages, apply different revenue models, and monitor reports. You can track API calls and charge developers for usage.

What may give you a hard time

Some users find the user-interface to access backend services not very friendly in structure and since a variety of services is offered, they feel the tool gets a bit clumsy to operate. You need hands-on training and experience to keep the APIs organized and secure.

5. Red Hat 3scale API Management

Overview: Red Hat 3scale API Management makes it easy to share, deploy, and monetize your APIs in a multi-cloud environment. It offers a centralized control with one dashboard to configure, monitor, and view logs. The traffic control mechanism is also excellent, which gives high priority to security and compliance.

What may interest you in Red Hat 3scale APIM

• Red Hat Fuse: One of the attractive features of the platform is its agile integration solution, Red Hat Fuse. It is a distributed integration platform which accelerates API creation, bringing a lot of convenience to the process.
• Istio service mesh: Another feature is Istio service mesh that deploys a proxy (called a sidecar) next to each service where all the traffic of the service is redirected to. The proxy scans through the traffic, applying security policies to ensure whether the traffic should go to the service or not, thus enhancing the security and traceability of the API.

What may give you a hard time

Initial configuration is slightly challenging for many users, and so the learning curve looks steep in the beginning. Other factors that bother some users are the limited payment gateway and dependency on third party URL rewriter.

6. Azure API Management

Overview: A product of Microsoft, Azure API management solution enables users to host APIs in Azure, third-party cloud, and on-premises, and side-by-side deploy API gateway to optimize traffic flow.

What may interest you in Azure APIM

• A well-integrated platform: Integration of different types of APIs and functions, including integration of Azure active directory with JWT token integration is very easy in Azure APIM. Azure API platforms also enable users to transform their legacy web services into REST-based APIs.
• Customizable developer portal: It enables users to create a customizable developer portal to keep the documentation of all the APIs in one place, thus making it easier for the users to explore all your APIs, learn about their usage, and request access. In fact, customization at various levels is possible, including API policies, request redirection, and list of approved restrict parameters.
• Self-hosted gateway: Its self-hosted gateway feature is an example of high-level architecture, allowing users to deploy containerized versions of API management gateway components in a hosting environment similar to the APIs.

What may give you a hard time

It is a great tool and while everything seems fairly easy to implement, a certain level of expertise is required to oversee the management APIs. As although documentation is available, many users find it complicated and inconsistent. You would need sound support from Microsoft Fast Track team for initial configurations.

7. Akana API Management Platform

Overview: Akana API management platform by Perforce is a centralized platform to manage decentralized applications. So while you can create and manage a full API lifecycle, you can also integrate your other applications ensuring security and compliance.

What may interest you in Akana

• Full suite of tools for hasslefree development: It allows you to import existing APIs or design an API from scratch using its graphical-point-and-click editor. Once built, Akana Developer Portal and marketplace is significantly mature to enable publishing and monetization of APIs in a secure environment.
• Automatic compliance: Akana enforces automatic compliance with security policies, ensuring authenticated and authorized access. It has great analytics tools to help you monitor transaction logs and give you insight into usage trends to optimize strategies.

What may give you a hard time

Once again, an excellent tool, which is maturing with time. And that may give you a hard time as many users say that new feature releases and constant updates require regression testing.

8. Boomi API Management

Overview: With Boomi API Management, you get a complete ecosystem for the management of APIs from design to publishing. The centralized management of APIs, whether it is of REST or SOAP or any web services add to its power-packed features.

What may interest you in Boomi APIM

• Vast range of connectors: Boomi API management offers good connectors that makes integrations a straightforward process, allowing the API to become a part of vast architecture. Its integration tools for data transformation and data feeds are also commendable.
• ETL items: Boomi is an excellent ETL tool. It is easy to pull data from various sources and transform into standard formats to store it in your enterprise database. It allows you to define standards to maintain consistency within the organization.

What may give you a hard time

Private key authentication is not supported, which means you have to build a new infrastructure to implement SFTP PKA in case of any requirement.

9. SwaggerHub

Overview: SwaggerHub by SmarBear is a user-friendly API management platform designed to accelerate API collaboration and standardization across multiple platforms. It has a good collection of scripts that makes development and documentation of APIs a swift process.

What may interest you in SwaggerHub

• Ease of use: The best part of the tool is that it is ready to use. Just login and begin! Its powerful editor with smart error feedback and syntax auto-completion enable you to complete the job quickly and efficiently. Even collaboration is easy with SwaggerHub. All you have to do is share the URL with your team and they can access the details along with input and output parameters.
• Great tool to build documents: REST service/API documentation is easy. If your existing API file does not have definitions, you can import openAPI definitions from open source Swagger Core in both JSON and YAML files and also convert JSON to YAML.

What may give you a hard time

Note that SwaggerHub saves your work in browser Cache, so by any chance, if you clear the cache, your work is gone. To avoid this, keep saving the content to another file in your machine. Besides, if you have multiple APIs, use style validators to maintain consistency across the APIs.

10. Apiary

Overview: Apiary powered by Oracle is an open source platform built to accelerate and control the design, development, and documentation of APIs. It has integrated API documentation with organized resources and code samples, and prototyping and testing tools to enable easy editing and allow changes and modifications within the platform.

What may interest you in Apiary

• Straightforward, simple UI: Many software developers treat Apiary as documentation as a service & tools. Apiary API Flow Tools consist of style guides, API editor, Mock server, API test, and API docs that speed up the process of API development, while ensuring quality, security, and compliance. API Flow supports both API blueprint and openAPI (Swagger).
• Greater collaboration: Developers can share API designs with their teams and customers, test the APIs for greater quality, and reuse API contracts and repositories for quick and effective development.

What may give you a hard time

While Apiary is a great tool for documentation, many developers find deployment and implementation processes time-consuming. Especially, they say management becomes more problematic when API grows in size.

11. WSO2 APP Cloud

Overview: WSO2 APP Cloud is an open-source, cloud-native API management platform that provides design, integration, and management solutions for API. The flexibility of open-source combined with the high-end management console provides better control over applications and logs.

What may interest you in WSO2 APP Cloud

• Free open-source tool: You just have to download the API manager from the platform and get started. This open-source tool provides a comprehensive cloud ecosystem to create and store APIs, publish and govern their use, and monitor their usage.
• Extensible lifecycle of API manager: It allows software developers to modify the behaviour of the API at different stages of lifecycle to meet the specific needs.

What may give you a hard time

The platform is not widely recommended by many for heavy integrations though. Besides, event processing and messaging is a bit clunky, and needs a lot of effort to keep things in order.

12. Sensedia API Platform

Overview: Sensedia API platform is a powerful API management platform that provides robust architecture build, consolidate, and monitor APIs. Its partner integration and ecosystem is advanced, scalable, and meets global security standards.

What may interest you in Sensedia

• Integration: Sensedia API Platform provides integration flexibility like no other. You could combine APIs, microservices, Service-Mesh, and event-driven architecture with a multitude of security management features to advance your integration strategy.
• Analytics: It has a Kibana powered dashboard that provides insight into APIs interactions, traffic, and usage statistics.
• Support: The organization also provides architecture consulting to help you create and maintain the right API ecosystem. It also provides onboarding support to new API consumers, allowing them to test their integrations with sandbox environments thus building grounds for the actual production setting.

What may give you a hard time

While it provides a cloud and on-premise environment, some users complain that its lack of support for Azure.

13. Agama API

Overview: Agama API by BlueSoft is one of the API management platforms for light integrations. The platform facilitates easy integrations of external and internal modules following REST standards thus assuring high flexibility to create a solution that reflects your requirements.

What may interest you in Agama API

• Open-source tools: It has a collection of open source tools that not only accelerate API creation and management journey but significantly reduce the cost factors. Agama’s focus on security and compliance in line with PSD2 regulations and standards is also commendable.
• Ease of use: The platform is easy to start with and learn, as it is based on Java and uses Spring framework, which is one of a widely used combination of programming language and framework in enterprise systems. Other components of the platform have also been prepared in containers for ease of use.

What may give you a hard time

It doesn’t really have a community. So, according to users, if you get stuck somewhere, you are totally dependent on the Agama support team or third-party vendor.

14. Harmony

Overview: Harmony by Jitterbit is an iPaas solution that combines the powers of SaaS, on-premises, and cloud. Backed by artificial intelligence, it enables a quick and reliable API development, integration, and monitoring process with simple drag and drop features.

• Citizen integrator: It is already admired by developers for simplistic workflow designing, high-end connectivity, and security, say overall API management. However, it also admired business users for its citizen integrator tools for enabling non-technical users to participate in integrations and gain competitive edge.
• Easy integrations: The platform allows you to transform complicated logics into simple mapping schemes. Queries to write, run, and schedule is an easy process as well. You can easily pull data from disparate systems and bring them into an integrated platform to get a 360 degree view of data across systems.

What may give you a hard time

First of all, it is really hard to dislike anything in Jitterbit Harmony. Across the board, everything is great, in some areas, like discrepancies between cloud and desktop clients, which create difficulty in recreating projects. At some places, many users have faced issues with documentation, however, excellent consultation provided by Jitterbit significantly covers up that pitfall.

15. SAP Integration Suite

Overview: Formerly known as SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, this modular integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) enables you to integrate on-premise and cloud-based solutions, exchange data with internal and external stakeholders, and leverage prebuilt content to resolve integration challenges.

What May Interest You in SAP Integration Suite

• All-in-one tool: SAP Integration Suite is designed to perform complex orchestrations combining event and batch driven API integrations to the simple point-to-point direct flows integration. This super amazing flexibility is backed by a set of powerful tools such as iFlow comparison tool and CPI scheduler, easy to configure plugins, and multi-cloud settings, from Google to AWS, and Azure to Workday.
  You must get yourself familiar with the SAP integration environment for the optimal use of the platform. Learning curve might not feel that steep if you have the right guidance from your integration partner.

What may give you a hard time

As a lot of documentation is available to ensure the implementation of best practices, dev guidelines, and compliance to security and governance, users must be vigilant for consistency and proper management within the team.

16. SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform

Overview: SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform enables users to configure snaplex, a runtime environment, in cloud (Cloudplex) or on premise (Groundplex). While SnapLogic installs and maintains the Couldplex instances, the Groundplex instances are installed on nodes at the private data center for improved security.

What May Interest You in SnapLogic

• Simplicity: As a web-based IPaaS solution, it has many connectors to access data from multiple endpoints, allowing it to perform simple flows to more complex transformations, as and when required. Its user interface is well organized into individual “snaps” with drag and drop features and recommendations as “Suggest Snaps” for mapping.

What May Give You a Hard Time

According to many users, the solution provides limited support in some areas, for say, it supports XML content but does not support XML mixed content, supports data with ML, but with limited computational power, has created its own version system, but does not support some well-known git repositories.

17. Workato

Overview: Workato is a low-code platform with flowchart-like user interface for integration development and testing, which accelerates the building and deployment of integrations in cloud or on-premise or hosted environments.

What May Interest You in Workato

• Low code yet powerful: Its low code or no code approach makes it easier to engage business users into integration development. Besides, you don’t really need a large IT team to manage a successful integration development.
• Work Bot Integration: Its Work Bot integration with business communication platforms is a lucrative feature that humanizes the otherwise machine to machine communication. When it comes to security features, Workato offers data masking and data encryption in line with the most updated security and governance standards.

What May Give You a Hard Time

While the application does not fall short at any level, it might need a little more focus on making the integrations reusable to save time and cost.

18. Stoplight

Overview: The ease of creation and collaboration is commendable in Stoplight. You can bring in technical and business users to collaborate on API designs in OpenAPI and JSON Schema using an intuitive user interface.

What May Interest You in Stoplight

• Inbuilt Github integration: Stoplight provides inbuilt Github integration offering you more control over access to workspaces in two ways: one that you do not really have to bring all your existing artifacts into stoplight and second is that you can provide Read Only access to non-critical team members.
• Mock Servers: Stoplight provides REST API mock servers and web services based on your OpenAPI Specification (formerly known as Swagger) document to validate the design of your APIs before the development process completes. It simulates real server behaviour by automatically validating REST headers and parameters against OpenAPI description.

What May Give You a Hard Time

While Stoplight is a great tool, it lacks certain UX features that are prevalent nowadays, such as drag and drop and reordering the pages of APIs within a model.

19. TIBCO Cloud API Management

Overview: TIBCO is an API management platform that has hundreds of connectors to add a variety of features to your applications. It is much easier to apply changes in existing applications with TIBCO Mashery that apparently leads to reduced development and deployment time.

What May Interest You in TIBCO

• High adaptability: You can use the tools for a wide range of integrations in different types of applications. With a rich set of connectors, TIBCO enables faster application design and development processes in a secure environment. You can either deploy the application in Cloud or on-premise ESB worker based on your requirements.
• Greater control: A highly stable product, TIBCO offers greater flexibility and control over managing the user community’s access to the APIs. It empowers users with a unique set of capabilities such as microservices, serverless computing, and containers for a more agile API development.

What May Give You a Hard Time

Several users find that TIBCO gets complex at certain capabilities on Cloud. For example, you need third party cloud PaaS to run third party administrators.

20. Axway AMPLIFY API Management

Overview: Axway is an open platform for API management to build and manage APIs in a secure environment. With Axway, you also get the deployment flexibility with on-premises, public or private cloud, or hybrid options. Besides, the platform provides unified integrated experience with popular third-party gateways such as Azure, Anypoint, GitHub, and so on.

What May Interest You in Axway

• Ease of use: It has a powerful dashboard with an intuitive interface to make navigation simple and organized. Their organized approach is also evident in how API contracts, governance, and documentation could be managed and used with several layers of authentication.
• Monetization: Axway monetization services are also lauded for their full-scale capabilities that accommodates various models of revenue-making systems and payment methods. What Axway really needs to build capabilities on are reporting, easy configurations of files, and developer portal.

What May Give You a Hard Time

Amplify is at the nascent stage of API platform solution. It lacks strong reporting capabilities, and also many users complain of its lack of stability and cumbersome developer portal.

21. Nevatech Sentient

Overview: Nevatech Sentinet is a full-cycle API management and API governance platform that covers every aspect of API development and distribution.

What May Interest You in Nevatech

• Simplicity: This .NET based platform along with IIS make it simple to write connectors and transformers in C#. It supports REST and SOAP communication protocols that simplify ensuring compliance, and controlling security in the cloud or on-premises.
• Customization: It has fully-customizable API management Portal and API Developer Portal along with API products, API Product Subscriptions, and self-managed API keys.

What May Give You a Hard Time

Although a great tool, many users find the migration system complex and time-consuming.

22. webMethods

Overview: webMethods by Software AG is an integration platform equipped with powerful tools to create, manage, monetize, and secure APIs and microservice applications with confidence. It is easy to set up and install and its integration capabilities across various types of infrastructure is highly commendable.

What May Interest You in webMethods

• Accelerate API development: Simple drag and drop features to enable rapid development, simultaneously visual design elements make it convenient for the business users. It has a vast set of connectors for various business processes and tasks functions.

What May Give You a Hard Time

Many users dislike its documentation support and consultation process and they find it slow.

At the End

Hope this list helps you fix an API platform for your business.

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