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Amazon API Gateway vs nginx: What are the differences?

Key differences between Amazon API Gateway and nginx

Introduction

Below are the key differences between Amazon API Gateway and nginx.

  1. Scalability: Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that automatically scales to handle high traffic volumes and provides consistent performance. It allows you to easily handle a large number of concurrent API requests without worrying about infrastructure management. On the other hand, nginx is a web server that can also act as a reverse proxy. While it can handle high traffic, its scalability depends on the underlying hardware and configuration.

  2. Security: Amazon API Gateway offers built-in security features such as authentication and authorization mechanisms, API key support, and integration with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). It allows you to protect your APIs and control access to them. Nginx also provides security features like SSL/TLS support and basic authentication, but it may require additional configurations to achieve similar levels of security.

  3. Backend Integration: Amazon API Gateway seamlessly integrates with various backend services such as AWS Lambda, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and HTTP/HTTPs endpoints. It provides easy integration and allows you to build serverless architectures. On the other hand, nginx can also integrate with backend services, but it might require additional configuration and customization depending on the specific use case.

  4. API Management: Amazon API Gateway provides a comprehensive set of tools and features for API management, including API versioning, usage plans, throttling, caching, and request/response transformations. It offers detailed monitoring and logging capabilities, allowing you to analyze API usage and performance. In comparison, nginx is primarily a web server and reverse proxy, and while it can handle API requests, it lacks the advanced API management features of Amazon API Gateway.

  5. Serverless Support: Amazon API Gateway has built-in support for serverless computing through its integration with AWS Lambda. It allows you to create serverless APIs without managing any infrastructure. Nginx, however, does not have native support for serverless computing, and if you want to integrate with serverless functions, you may need to configure additional components or use third-party plugins.

  6. Pricing: Amazon API Gateway pricing mainly depends on the number of API calls and data transfer. While it offers a free tier with certain limitations, the overall cost can increase with increasing usage. Nginx, on the other hand, is open-source software and free to use. However, if you require enterprise-level support or additional features, there may be costs associated with licensing and support from vendors.

In summary, Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service with built-in scalability, security, API management, and serverless support. It seamlessly integrates with various AWS services, making it an ideal choice for building and managing APIs in a cloud environment. Nginx, on the other hand, is a versatile web server and reverse proxy with scalability and security features, but it may require additional configuration and lack advanced API management capabilities.

Advice on Amazon API Gateway and NGINX

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities. Ready, aim fire!

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Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 4 upvotes · 723.6K views
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I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.

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From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

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I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.

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Leandro Barral
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I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 689.2K views
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I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works

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Pros of Amazon API Gateway
Pros of NGINX
  • 37
    AWS Integration
  • 7
    Websockets
  • 1
    Serverless
  • 1.4K
    High-performance http server
  • 894
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 289
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 226
    Web server
  • 175
    Simplicity
  • 136
    Easy setup
  • 30
    Content caching
  • 21
    Web Accelerator
  • 15
    Capability
  • 14
    Fast
  • 12
    High-latency
  • 12
    Predictability
  • 8
    Reverse Proxy
  • 7
    Supports http/2
  • 7
    The best of them
  • 5
    Great Community
  • 5
    Lots of Modules
  • 5
    Enterprise version
  • 4
    High perfomance proxy server
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Reversy Proxy
  • 2
    Blash
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 2
    Fast and easy to set up
  • 2
    Slim
  • 2
    saltstack
  • 1
    Virtual hosting
  • 1
    Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
  • 1
    Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
  • 1
    Ingress controller

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Cons of Amazon API Gateway
Cons of NGINX
  • 2
    No websocket broadcast
  • 1
    Less expensive
  • 10
    Advanced features require subscription

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Amazon API Gateway?

Amazon API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, authorization and access control, monitoring, and API version management.

What is NGINX?

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

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Blog Posts

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