Azure API Management vs. NGINX Plus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure API Management
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure API Management supports creation of API.
$0.04
Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
NGINX Plus
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
NGINX Plus is presented as a cloud‑native, easy-to-use reverse proxy, load balancer, and API gateway, from F5.
$849
per month billed annually
Pricing
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Editions & Modules
Consumption
0.042 per 10,000 calls
Lightweight and serverless version of API Management service, billed per execution
Developer
$48.04
per month Non-production use cases and evaluations
Basic
$147.17
per month Entry-level production use cases
Standard
$686.72
per month Medium-volume production use cases
Premium
$2,795.17
per month High-volume or enterprise production use cases
Isolated
TBA
per month Enterprise production use cases requiring high degree of isolation
Team
$849
per month billed annually
Advanced
$2,099
per month billed annually
Enterprise
Tiered Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Considered Both Products
Azure API Management
Chose Azure API Management
Apigee is by Google and seems to be promising. The cost seems high though. With Azure, we do not have to make any special purchases. CapEx vs OpEx! But, Apigee could be more environment independent compared to Azure APIM. The promise of speed by Apigee is also better compared …
Chose Azure API Management
It’s a great tool, and so easy to seamlessly connect into your current Azure world that it’s hard not to look at it or even test the waters with it. It’s priced well, and is feature-rich enough to accomplish most tasks. I think the ease of having everything together and the …
Chose Azure API Management
Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:
1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.
2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.
NGINX Plus
Chose NGINX Plus
The API and dashboard alone make NGINX Plus a better choice.
Features
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
API Management
Comparison of API Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure API Management
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
NGINX Plus
-
Ratings
API access control8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Rate limits and usage policies5.40 Ratings00 Ratings
API usage data8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
API user onboarding9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
API versioning8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Usage billing and payments5.20 Ratings00 Ratings
API monitoring and logging9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Azure API Management
-
Ratings
NGINX Plus
7.1
Ratings
11% below category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure API ManagementNGINX Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
The range of policies that enable the APIs to loosely couple it with security, rate limit, retry, etc. are good. We can easily tie authentication mechanisms to external and other internal services without having to modify the backend.
Read full review
I think that NGINX Plus could be used in place of a hardware load balancer and it would be light weight and easier to configure than a hardware based load balancer but in terms of usability a GUI for said load balancer would definitely help in setting up
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Pros
  • Management of APIs
  • Security of the API through Azure AD, AD B2C etc.
  • Providing an outer layer through APIs
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  • Load balancing
  • Caching
  • App security
  • Boost App performance
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Cons
  • Cost - the upfront cost is a bit restrictive. I've been told it is because there are a few underlying VMs that are running this service. So if you're just starting out with API management, it can be an expensive proposition. Value increases as you add additional APIs. If you're using Azure B2C for the developer portal, you'll require Standard or Premium since they support AAD integration.
  • Security granularity - at time of writing, APIM doesn't support breaking out operations to products. For example, if you have an API that has a GET and a POST operation, and you want the POST operation to require a different subscription. There is a work around, but it makes management a bit messy.
  • Developer and Publisher portal - it's a little weird. Microsoft hasn't migrated all the publisher portal functionality into the "native" Azure portal. So some of it feels a little weird - especially when working with the content management side of things for the developer portal.
  • Scaling - while it's easy to scale up, the cost of APIM ramps up very quickly. Standard -> Premium is a 4x jump.
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  • An AI bot would be cool to help build config files
  • More webinars for advanced NGINX Plus would be great
  • GUI tool... might already be one available
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
No reason not to renew it, we are happy with it.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
The UI is not there.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
We had an issue after upgrading from RHEL 7 to 8, and there were some issues that the security team imposed upon the platform with a scanning tool. We also had a VXLAN environment that was not properly sending a gratuitous arp to the network. NGINX support was instrumental to speedily resolving our issue.
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Alternatives Considered
Azure APIM vs Amazon API Gateway:
1) Azure APIM was a complete package that included a developer portal.
2) We are very Microsoft centric - so the Microsoft product suite aligned very well with our business needs.
3) It was faster and easier to stand up Azure APIM for testing than it was for the Amazon API Gateway.
Read full review
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It’s really pay as you go, so it's not that costly to get in and try it out. There’s no expensive client to buy and manage, but you do need to stay on top of the rapidly changing Azure environment to be sure you upgrade or adjust when needed.
  • It’s not great having more than one API tool, but it’s ok to spread out your work, as you always want the right tool for the right job. For example, if you are a Salesforce-heavy organization, I’d go with Mule over Azure.
  • It was easy getting an external consultant access to the tool to build their own API for a project they were working on for us.
Read full review
  • We are planning by using NGINX it can greatly reduce our OPEX by 50% "just our own running APIGW" the cascading effects in the long run will be much more.
Read full review
ScreenShots