Azure API Management (APIM) is a fully managed service that enables you to publish, secure, transform, maintain, and monitor APIs. It provides a gateway, developer portal, analytics, and a range of policies to help you manage the entire API lifecycle.
While both provide routing capabilities, API Management focuses on API-specific features such as transformation, rate limiting, and developer portals. Application Gateway is a layer‑7 load balancer optimized for web traffic, without the API‑centric policies and developer tools.
Azure APIM offers three main tiers: Developer (for non‑production testing), Standard (for production workloads), and Premium (for high‑scale, multi‑region, and advanced features). Each tier provides increasing capacity, SLA guarantees, and advanced capabilities such as VNET integration.
Yes. You can expose on‑premises services through APIM by connecting via a self‑hosted gateway or using Azure VPN/ExpressRoute to securely reach your internal APIs.
APIM supports multiple security mechanisms: OAuth 2.0, JWT validation, client certificates, IP filtering, and subscription keys. Policies can be applied globally, per product, or per operation to enforce the required security model.
APIM integrates with Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Log Analytics. You can view real‑time metrics, request traces, and set alerts for latency, error rates, and usage patterns.