Akamai API Gateway vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Akamai API Gateway
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Akamai offers their API Gateway, touting easy control and access to enterprise applications via their services.N/A
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Features
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
API Management
Comparison of API Management features of Product A and Product B
Akamai API Gateway
7.7
1 Ratings
8% below category average
NGINX
-
Ratings
API access control8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API usage data8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API user onboarding8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API versioning7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Usage billing and payments7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API monitoring and logging9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Akamai API Gateway
-
Ratings
NGINX
7.8
21 Ratings
2% below category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.210 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings7.018 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.718 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings7.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 7.9 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 7.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Akamai API GatewayNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
Akamai
It is really helpful for managing [the] scaling of systems with need and utilizing resources when needed. Also, DevOps support for deployment plans is quite useful when deploying applications. Monitoring systems with graphQL and utilizing them in APIs is quite helpful when used in Microservices systems to identify system capabilities and user utilization of applications.
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F5
[NGINX] is very well suited for high performance. I have seen it used on servers with 1k current connections with no issues. Despite seeing it used in many environments I've never seen software developers use it over apache, express, IIS in local dev environments so it may be more difficult to setup. I've also seen it used to load balance again without issues.
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Pros
Akamai
  • Graphically representation in GraphQL
  • Scaling system
  • DevOps management
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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
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Cons
Akamai
  • Quota enforcement can be simplified
  • Caching mechanism for API with akamai can be improved
  • Gateway configuration can be simplified as details are not much elaborate
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F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Likelihood to Renew
Akamai
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the product
Read full review
Usability
Akamai
No answers on this topic
F5
Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.
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Support Rating
Akamai
No answers on this topic
F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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Alternatives Considered
Akamai
Akamai [API Gateway] helps better in terms of representation of graphQL and its consumption in monitoring system making a package for deployment speed with monitoring and scaling application with all services and utilizing most of a system without much knowledge of other aspects. Also, [a] user-friendly system helps people to handle [the] system with necessary options
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F5
We have used Traffic, Apache, Google Cloud Load Balancing and other managed cloud-based load balancers. When it comes to scale and customization nothing beats Nginx. We selected Nginx over the others because
  • we have a large number of services and we can manage a single Nginx instance for all of them
  • we have high impact services and Nginx never breaks a sweat under load
  • individual services have special considerations and Nginx lets us configure each one uniquely
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Return on Investment
Akamai
  • Decrease in time required for deployment and monitoring by significant amount causing less support resources needed
  • Scaling applications on month-end at high usage time has reduced TAT time for issues and no of issues occurring
  • Quota enforcement has allowed [managing] multiple systems and their needs in respective stakeholders hands and reduced infra teams involvement in [the] management of reoccurring problems
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F5
  • Nginx has decreased the burden of web server administration and maintenance, and we are spending less time on server issues than when we were using Apache.
  • Nginx has allowed more people in our company to get involved with configuring things on the web server, so there's no longer a single point of failure ("the Apache guy").
  • Nginx has given us the ability to handle a larger number of requests without scaling up in hardware quite so quickly.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration