Best API Management Tools

The foundation of hi-tech software development is APIs, which are the backbone of development and enable seamless system integration and communication. Application programming interface (API) management is how a company develops, monitors, and manages APIs in a safe and scalable environment. 

API management tools are essential for businesses that want to manage their APIs effectively. These tools help businesses monitor, control, and monetize their application program interfaces (APIs) in a secure development environment. 

With so many API management tools available in the market, it can be challenging to choose the right one. Today, we will comprehend the details regarding the API lifecycle management tools with insight into their features, pricing, and reviews. So let’s get started.

What is an API Management Tool?

Before understanding the API management tool, let’s briefly discuss API management. The methodology of managing API functions such as designing, releasing, documenting, analyzing, and monitoring APIs in a secure environment is known as API management.

Companies may ensure the security and usability of their internal and external APIs by implementing an API management platform. Now, let’s talk about what an API management tool is.

The API management solution is software testing tool that helps businesses create, deploy, monitor, and secure their APIs. Furthermore, they offer a centralized platform for controlling an API’s entire lifecycle, from conception to deactivation. In addition, such tools provide a variety of features and functionalities that accelerate the development of APIs, increase security, and boost performance. 

Who Uses API Management Platforms?

Many stakeholders involved in the API lifecycle are catered to by the API management software. Some key users of API management platforms include:

1. Developers

   Best API management tools offer developers the allied interfaces to create, test, and deploy APIs. Additionally, these tools help with API versioning, documentation, and debugging, which streamlines the development process. 

2. Development Managers

   To supervise the API lifecycle, monitor performance indicators, and guarantee adherence to companies' standards, development management depends on API management solutions. 

3. IT Administrators

   IT administrators are responsible for managing access control, implementing security measures, and monitoring API traffic. This leverages them to set usage limits, enforce authentication mechanisms, and handle scalability requirements. 

4. Business Analysts

   Business analysts mainly focus on keeping track of key performance indicators and evaluating how APIs are affecting organizational objectives. For business analysts, API tools offer analytics and reporting abilities, allowing them to gain insight into API usage, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.

Features of API Management Tools

A variety of features are available in the best API management software to speed up the creation and administration of APIs.  Some characteristics that the best API management platforms share are:

1. API Editing

   The creation of API specifications, the definition of endpoints, and the documentation of API functionality are all features that management tools frequently offer to help with API design.  They might support the well-liked RAML or OpenAPI (previously Swagger) formats for API descriptions.

2. Traffic Control

   API management solutions providers offer the ability to modify and transform API requests and responses. The system and version capabilities include functions like message transformation, payload modification, content type conversion, and data mapping.

3. API Monitoring

   API solutions offer the handling and reporting of errors and exceptions that arise during API interactions. To facilitate debugging and troubleshooting, they might provide features like error logging, error code mapping, exception handling, and customizable error messages. 

4. Automation

   API development, versioning, testing, and retirement are just a few of the API integration processes that can be automated thanks to API management tools.  To have seamless API updates and automated procedures, tools are integrated with DevOps tools and continuous integration and continuous improvement (CI/CD) pipelines.

5. Reporting and Analytics

   API tools track and analyze API performance, usage patterns, and trends. It is one of the robust reporting and analytics features. They frequently allow users to create custom reports based on particular metrics, filters, and periods, in addition to providing pre-built reports and dashboards.  These insights assist businesses in finding bottlenecks, maximizing API usage, and making data-driven choices.

Benefits of API Management Tools

Numerous advantages provided by these tools help businesses and developers succeed. The following are some major benefits of utilizing API management tools:

1. Increased Security and Control

   API security testing tools offer improved security safeguards and access control. By enabling authentication and authorization mechanisms, you can make sure that only approved users or programs can access your APIs. In addition, these tools provide rate limiting, throttling, and monitoring functions to safeguard your APIs against misuse, unauthorized access, and potential security risks.

2. Scalability and Performance Optimization

   API management tools aid in improving the scalability and performance of your APIs. They give you the ability to track usage and performance metrics for your APIs, enabling you to spot and fix any bottlenecks or problems.  To make sure that your APIs can handle increased traffic and provide users with high-performance responses, these tools frequently offer caching mechanisms, load balancing, and request routing capabilities.

3. Enriched Productivity

   Tools for managing APIs provide features that improve productivity and developer engagement. You can publish comprehensive documentation, code samples, and interactive API consoles on their developer portals or documentation platforms. These portals shorten the learning curve for developers and speed up the development process. Additionally, some tools provide collaboration features like API testing and versioning to help teams unite and speed up the development process. 

4. Analytics and Insights

   The tools offer insightful analytics about the use and performance of APIs. It gathers information on user behavior, API calls, and other pertinent metrics, which you can examine to learn insightful things. By understanding user behavior patterns, underutilized APIs, making informed decisions about API improvements, and even spotting potential business opportunities, these insights can be very useful. With the help of these tools' analytics features, you can evaluate the effectiveness and influence of your APIs on your overall business objectives. 

5. Cost and Time Savings

   API tools can help with cost savings and speed up development. These tools do away with the requirement for custom-built solutions or manual API management procedures by offering a centralized platform for managing APIs. Additionally, these tools frequently offer pricing plans based on how often you use your APIs, allowing you to adjust your costs in line with the actual demand for your APIs.

How To Choose The Right API Management Solution?

The market for APIs is crowded with various tools that offer extensive features and functionalities. Choosing a reliable API management solution for your product development process is a crucial stage for the organization. Some key aspects to keep in mind while choosing an API management tool are:

1. Ease of Use

   To make the API management solutions easy to use for developers and administrators, look for a user-friendly interface and intuitive workflow. For a seamless onboarding process, take into account whether thorough documentation, tutorials, and support resources are readily available. Also, don’t forget to analyze the accessibility of self-service features that enable developers to effectively manage their APIs.

2. Scalability

   Make sure the API management solution's scalability capabilities can accommodate your organization's present and future API traffic demands. To accommodate increased API usage while maintaining performance, take into account features like load balancing, caching, and horizontal scaling. According to the requirements of your organization, look for a solution that can be scaled across a variety of environments, such as on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid configurations.

3. Security

   When choosing an API management solution, security should be given top consideration. Review the solution's authentication and authorization features, including things like OAuth support, API keys, and role-based access control. To ensure that sensitive data is protected, take into account whether the solution complies with industry standards and laws.

4. Features and Functionality

   Examine the API management solution's depth of features and functionalities. Seek out capabilities for managing the entire API integrations, including API design, development, testing, deployment, monitoring, and versioning. 

   Check whether developer portal features like interactive documentation, code samples, and sandbox environments are available to improve the developer experience and engagement. Think about a system's ability to be seamlessly connected and interoperable with other technologies and systems through integration.

5. Vendor Support and Ecosystem

   Be sure to take into account the API management vendor’s standing, level of experience, and customer support. An ecosystem of API management solution users that is vibrant and active can offer more resources, opportunities for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Examine the vendor's roadmap and commitment to ongoing product development to ensure the solution is up to date with new trends and technologies.

List of Top 5 API Management Tools Comparison

Name	Free Trial	Demo	Starting Price
IBM API Connect	30-days	Yes	Starting price at $83/month
Postman	14-days	Yes	Starting price at $12//user/month
Workato	7-days	Yes	Custom Pricing
Mulesoft Anypoint Platform	14-days	No	Custom Pricing
Stoplight	14-days	Yes	Starting price at $39/month

Let's compare API management tools after understanding API lifecycle management and its features, advantages, and difficulties. The top five API management tools are as follows:

1. IBM API Connect

IBM API Connect is a product built for DevOps, offering a single connector to all APIs and web services. It is one of the top API management tools and enables you to combine data from various sources into a single main location or database. Across various clouds, this tool is used to secure and manage APIs at all stages of development. For the entire API management lifecycle, this tool is among the best. 

Key Features 

• API management
• Role based access control
• Cloud connectors
• Reliable architecture

Pros

• From a single developer portal, it manages the complete API cycle.
• The simple and easy-to-use user interface.
• The platform is more secure and reliable than others.

Cons

• Some user reviews mention a lack of product documentation.
• Small business owners find it difficult to afford it due to its high cost.

Pricing

• The pricing includes various tiers, starting with free trials. 
• Base Tier: USD 83/ month
• Advanced Tier: USD 2280/month

 2. Postman

With real-time customers, over 25 million developers use Postman. It is one of the world's most famous API management products. The main goal of Postman as an API platform is to allow you to create and use APIs. Postman improves collaboration and simplifies each phase of the API lifecycle, allowing you to design better APIs faster. 

Key Features

• Deployment control
• Access control based on role
• User groups
• Token scanning
• Audit logs

Pros

• It is a popular, intuitive and simple-to-use testing solution.
• The platform features a navigable user interface.
• The team workspaces feature enables developers on the same team to collaborate and share documentation on an API project.

Cons

• Postman does not support other APIs well, such as SOAP; only RESTful APIs are supported.
• Some Postman users reported crashes or slowdowns from the software, as well as high memory usage.

Pricing

• It is free to sign up and then offers a three tiers pricing model.
• Basic: $12/per user per month
• Professional: $29/per user per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

3. Workato

Workato is a smart automation platform that lets you integrate multiple technologies with your APIs and increases operational efficiency. It is useful for teams with inexperienced or citizen developers who must participate in the automation design process.

Key Features

• Low-code integration
• User groups
• Enterprise-level workflow automation
• On-premises agent

Pros

• Workato has a beginner-friendly approach with low codes and no codes.
• It allows users to easily move records from one SaaS application to another.
• The platform is highly cost-effective, resulting in better overall ROIs.

Cons

• The learning curve can be a bit steep for beginners.
• Some of the integrations are seemingly still in the testing phase.

Pricing

• The platform provides custom pricing.

4. Mulesoft Anypoint Platform

MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform is yet another top API platform for linking apps and data throughout the API life cycle. Furthermore, using an open, pluggable architecture that permits extensive integration into current systems and cloud services, the platform gives secure access to data and services. It is also based on open standards, allowing organizations to integrate with any application.

Key Features

• Workflow automation
• Low code integration
• Role based access control
• Rapid API development 

Pros

• It allows developers to prepare and design their applications.
• It is very simple to use and user-friendly.
• Because Anypoint is Java-based, it is an excellent alternative for teams who have experienced Java programmers.

Cons

• Mulesoft's integrated development environment (IDE) tool is Eclipse, and Eclipse has high memory usage and slowness tendencies that may impede developers from working on large projects.
• When mapping occurs, Mulesoft does not retrieve metadata from databases.

Pricing

• MuleSoft's Anypoint platform offers a free trial with a customized pricing model.

 5. Stoplight

With a design-first approach, you can create successful API programs of any size that achieve business outcomes. Stoplight is the only API solution that focuses on design. The Stoplight platform promotes consistency, reusability, and quality for a delightful development experience through integrated documentation and governance.

Key Features

• API modeling tools
• HTTP request creator
• Interactive API Mocking
• API transformation

Pros

• The platform has OpenAI support for better efficiency.
• It is capable of seamless GIT integration.
• Stoplight API offers extensive Markdown support.

Cons

• It struggles to provide easy support for multiple environments.
• Although setting up Stoplight is not difficult, there are tools that are easier to set up for testing endpoints.

Pricing

• Three users can sign up for free, after which there are pricing plans.
• Basic: $39/ per month
• Starter: $79/ per month
• Professional: $319/ per month

Challenges of API Management Tools

Despite their many benefits, they also have unique difficulties. Let's examine some typical issues and how API management solutions resolve them.

1. Security

   Some of the common challenges that need to be faced include ensuring authentication and authorization management, preventing potential attacks and vulnerabilities, uploading encryption, and access control. When your business is getting ready to scale API management operations, security must always remain a top priority. 

2. Governance

   Well, these tools are also entwined with the policies, like other IT tools and resources. The ideal procedure for establishing consistent governance API guidelines  and standards for the organization with API governance tools gets underway as soon as API development begins. Also, managing the downline and upgrading the API versioning by keeping track of API usage and compliance.

3. Documentation

   To ensure that your API is properly utilized, documentation is essential. Offering top-notch documentation that is in line with the current codebase makes sense to make their lives simpler. A developer portal can be made available to accomplish this.

   Developer portals are designed to present your API endpoints, terms of usage, community resources, and, ideally, a live chat in an easy-to-read style.

4. Technological complexity

   The difficulty of API integration is perhaps the most frequent but not the least significant issue that can arise. Adopting API technology necessitates a redesign of internal systems as well as KPIs, security, and governance standards, as well as data management and integrity.

5. Cost and time consumption

   API management tools can be relatively expensive at first but are an investment in the future. In addition to the application itself, the cost of employing talented developers and paying for the staff may go beyond your budget. Over time, support and maintenance costs may increase.

6. Scalability

   During the development process, scaling infrastructure and maintaining high API traffic loads is difficult. Additionally, issues with load balancing and effectively distributing traffic can occasionally arise. The areas where the scalability of the API management platforms may be tested include maintaining the queue, managing demand spikes, and ensuring high availability.

Latest Trends in API Management Tools 

API management solutions are enhancing their space with the support of rising technology. Here are the top five trends for  API management tools:

1. Low code and No code API Management

   Low-code/no-code API management is an approach that enables automated code generation through visual building blocks like drag-and-drop and pull-down menu interfaces. This trend is offering user-friendly interfaces and visual development environments that help beginners integrate APIs successfully.

2. Cloud Native API Management

   Cloud-native API management is a way of managing APIs that operates natively to manage your entire cloud-native digital ecosystem. It offers a layer of mediation, abstraction, analytics, and systems simplification. With the rise of cloud computing, cloud-native architectures and technologies are the new models for API management.

3. API First Design

   API-first design is a software development approach in which the API is designed and documented before any other part of the application. By employing an API-first design pattern, a single-source-of-truth artifact is documented before writing a single line of code

   This approach places a focus on creating APIs as the first thing to take into account when creating applications.  It entails creating APIs that are user-friendly for developers, well-documented, and simple to use for integrations by outside developers.

4. API-as-a-product

   One of the latest trends gaining popularity is API-as-a-product. This API approach treats an API as a product rather than just a means of communication between different apps. API-as-a-Product is a type of Software-as-a-Service that monetizes niche functionality, typically served over HTTP. Tech companies with API products often adopt a freemium model and utilize strategies like rate limiting to enable subscription tiers.

5. Serverless architecture

   Serverless architecture (also known as serverless computing or function as a service, FaaS) is a software design pattern where applications are hosted by a third-party service, eliminating the need for server software and hardware management by the developer.  It is a cloud computing that lets you operate apps and services without managing or provisioning on-premise servers. This allows you to concentrate on developing your application rather than worrying about server upkeep.

Conclusion

For businesses looking to optimize their API development, deployment, and management procedures, selecting the appropriate API management tool is essential.  Examine your needs, take into account elements like scalability, security, and comprehensiveness, and choose a tool that fits them.

Maintain up-to-date knowledge of the most recent developments in API management tools to maximize these developments and improve your API-driven initiatives. Investing in the best API management platform will surely give your organization a key competitive advantage and streamline operations.