Don't Reinvent the Wheel: API Gateways in 2025

For many of us with a strong engineering mindset, there’s an innate temptation to build — to create our own perfect solution. And sometimes, that makes sense. But when it comes to API gateways, I’d argue that in 2025, there’s almost no good reason to roll your own.

Let me explain why.

The API Gateway’s Role

An API gateway acts as the single entry point for a set of backend services. It provides crucial responsibilities like:

• Request routing
• Authentication & authorization
• Rate limiting
• Caching
• Protocol translation
• Observability and logging

These aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re core infrastructural features that need to be secure, scalable, and robust.

Building Your Own? Here’s What You’re Signing Up For

If you're thinking of building a custom gateway, you're not just handling HTTP traffic. You’re now also responsible for:

• SSL termination and cert rotation
• Logging and distributed tracing support
• Quotas and throttling
• Auth integrations (OAuth2, JWT, etc.)
• Managing retries, timeouts, circuit breakers
• Security vulnerability management

That’s a huge surface area. And most likely, you're not doing it better than the folks at Netflix, AWS, or VMware.

Battle-Tested Alternatives in 2025

Let’s talk about the serious contenders:

1. Spring Cloud Gateway

A Java-based gateway built on Spring Boot and Project Reactor. Ideal for Spring-heavy shops.

• ✅ Great integration with Spring ecosystems (e.g., OAuth2, config server)
• ✅ Declarative route definitions
• ✅ Built-in resilience and filters
• ⚠️ Requires JVM and some operational overhead

2. Apache Camel with HTTP Components

Camel can be used as an API gateway by leveraging its routing DSL and components.

• ✅ Powerful for complex message routing and mediation
• ✅ Easily extendable with processors
• ⚠️ Not a "gateway-first" tool — more suited for integration-heavy use cases

3. AWS API Gateway

A fully managed gateway that’s native to the AWS ecosystem.

• ✅ Scales effortlessly
• ✅ Integrates with Lambda, Cognito, IAM
• ✅ Built-in monitoring, throttling, caching
• ⚠️ Cloud vendor lock-in
• ⚠️ Potentially high cost at scale

4. Kong, Tyk, and Ambassador

These API-specific platforms have matured significantly:

• Rich plugin ecosystems
• Developer portals
• Advanced traffic management
• Open source or cloud-hosted options

TL;DR: Don’t Build, Integrate

Unless you're a cloud provider or building an API gateway for internal learning purposes, your time is better spent configuring and extending an existing platform — not reimplementing decades of network engineering best practices.

In 2025, the real innovation comes from how you design your APIs, not how you route traffic between them.

Related Reading

• Why Not Reinvent the Wheel (IAM Edition)
• Workflow Orchestration Tools Compared
• Monolith vs Modular vs Microservices

Stay thoughtful.

— Konstantinos