We performed a comparison between Apigee and Layer 7 API Management based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Apigee has very high availability and makes it easy for users to manage the entire lifecycle of the API. It offers vast opportunities for easy customization. Users find some of Layer 7 API Management’s tools and features difficult to implement and bulky, causing processes to slow down. Layer 7 could also use more cloud-native features.
"Apigee is a strong-featured solution. It leads in Gartner Quadrant ratings and it is a full-slated API solution that has the features that an API gateway requires."
"The most valuable features are low-code play, quick packaging, and production."
"I'm still evaluating, but in terms of overall performance and stability, it's quite good."
"The most valuable feature of Apigee is its simplicity of deploying an API and restricting access, like rate limit, with the API."
"The security that you have with Apigee is very good and aligns with compliance."
"It is easy to set up. It is on Google Platform, and there are multiple deployment models they support, which is great."
"Apigee is a great product with good feedback and recommendations from clients."
"The security provided by the solution is excellent."
"I appreciate Layer 7 API management for its comprehensive approach to the entire API lifecycle, including governance, management, and analytics."
"We definitely get good responses from the technical team and they are quite responsive."
"You can create little, custom Java assertions that you can insert to do your business logic, which might not be covered by the commercial product out-of-the-box."
"Mobile app capabilities is good for building mobile apps to consume developed APIs. Also, the API Portal capabilities are very nice, up to and including the ability to do monetization. Security features are exhaustive, with several adapters to all leading identity suites."
"Some of the performance matrix that API Gateway gives off, we monitor them via SNMP traps, and then we tie them into our monitoring system. You can actually monitor some of the latencies and some of the performance aspects of both API Gateways, as well back end services. So having that line of sight surely helps in terms DevOps."
"Every API that we get from external or from internal goes through this layer first, and it should not be a bottleneck. That was the problem we had before. Now it's no longer a bottleneck. It's more like a throughput, this process is less than 10 milliseconds for any particular API."
"The Portal API helps us with deployments. It also helps to have a catalog of everything. The replication is also a critical feature for us. It helps to have a more robust architecture and makes our systems are highly available."
"The Gateway is most important because it is our strategic front door into the company for all APIs."
"The pricing for the product was a bit higher. I also found it challenging to manage sometimes."
"Maintaining and deploying revisions need to be more defined."
"In terms of the functionalities of a typical API gateway, Apigee is actually doing its job, but when it involves integration with backend applications, which some gateways have, I don't believe it has this functionality. You have to do Java or do some other low-level coding before you are able to do the integration. Apigee has a lot of components, which means that management will be a bit difficult. It probably has ten different components, and all of these components leverage open-source utilities, such as NGINX. When those open-source vendors upgrade their utility, Apigee usually lags behind because they need to do a lot of tests and any required development in their own platform. They need to do rigorous testing to make sure that nothing breaks. Because of that, it takes them a while to upgrade whatever components have been upgraded by the open-source vendor that owns the utility. We've been chasing them for a particular upgrade for well over a year and a half, and they have not done that upgrade. It is creating a security risk for us as an enterprise, but that upgrade has not been done, even though the open-source vendor, the owner of the utility, has upgraded it a long time ago."
"I see some lagging in regards to integration capacity"
"I don't have any notes for improvement."
"They need to work on the cost of the solution."
"The cost of the solution is quite high."
"Apigee is demanding on the infrastructure so the setup cost is very high for an on-premises deployment."
"The development toolkit used for creating APIs should be more online and user-friendly. Deployment and tracking could also be improved. Tools like Apigee provide a complete online experience along with RESTful APIs, to manage all activities. It is a very nice and user-friendly solution compared to CA."
"They need a workflow for the API Developer Portal, where the process only allows requests to go to the correct person."
"The Portal is not stable."
"The portal is not the most intuitive and the way things are displayed makes it difficult to find the information we need."
"I would like to be able to see the publisher role be able to be organized within organizations, so somebody within that role can only manipulate their particular policies."
"Some problems with response time."
"The interface should be improved."
"It is not possible for clients to migrate to a newer version."
Apigee is ranked 2nd in API Management with 82 reviews while Layer7 API Management is ranked 10th in API Management with 109 reviews. Apigee is rated 8.2, while Layer7 API Management is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Apigee writes "Has a robust community and outstanding performance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Layer7 API Management writes "Has great drag-and-drop features and it requires minimal coding ". Apigee is most compared with Microsoft Azure API Management, IBM API Connect, Amazon API Gateway, WSO2 API Manager and MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, whereas Layer7 API Management is most compared with Kong Gateway Enterprise, Amazon API Gateway, MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager, Microsoft Azure API Management and IBM API Connect. See our Apigee vs. Layer7 API Management report.
See our list of best API Management vendors.
We monitor all API Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
