Comparing Gloo Gateway and Apigee Security, Governance, Flexibility, and Customization

An API gateway needs to ensure security while also accommodating various use cases and business requirements across applications.

We’ve evaluated five of the leading API gateway solutions, including Gloo Gateway and Apigee, and compared them against seven key capabilities in this API gateway buyer’s guide.

In part 3 of our series (see part 1 here and part 2 here), we’re looking at how each solution handles security and governance and flexibility and customization.

Security and Governance

API gateways should make it easy to adhere to security policies and do so consistently across APIs.

These are the API gateway security and governance capabilities we compared:

• Role-based access control determines level of access based on a user’s assigned role.
• External authentication and authorization delegates user identity verification and access control to an external system or service.
• Traffic management controls the flow of requests and responses between clients and backend services.
• Encryption encodes sensitive data transmitted between services in order to safeguard it.
• Rate limiting restricts the number of requests made to backend services within a specified time frame.
• Advanced security includes other security measures that protect data.
• Secrets integration manages sensitive information using a vault system.

Overall, Gloo Gateway gets a 4/4 for these offerings, while Apigee gets a 2/4. Read the full breakdown in the API Gateway buyers guide.

Flexibility and Customization

Businesses often have multiple use cases and varied requirements that necessitate customization.

These are the API gateway flexibility and customization capabilities we compared:

• Ease of use describes how installation, configuration, and deployment operate.
• Out-of-the-box integrations include other applications that can be used to support the API gateway.
• Customization allows for additional functionality.
• Service mesh support incorporates service mesh integration with API gateways.

Overall, Gloo Gateway gets a 4/4 for these offerings, while Apigee gets a 2/4. Read the full breakdown in the API Gateway buyers guide.

Compare Every API Gateway Capability

To learn more about all of the capabilities we compared for Gloo Gateway and Apigee, download our API gateway buyer’s guide.

For a better understanding of API gateways, take our API Gateway Basics course.