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Amazon API Gateway vs Amazon EventBridge

Discover how Amazon API Gateway compares to Amazon EventBridge, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.

Amazon API Gateway logo

What is Amazon API Gateway?

Amazon API Gateway is a pay-as-you-go service for building, deploying, and managing RESTful APIs and WebSocket APIs. It handles traffic management, CORS support, access and authentication, version management, and more.

Suitable for:

  • Realtime chat applications
  • Online collaborative apps
  • Multiplayer gaming
  • Realtime analytics
  • Monitoring services

Not suitable for:

  • Heavy data transfers

Pros:

  • Pre-built adapters
  • Fine-grained security features
  • Scalable
  • Multiple SDKs

Cons:

  • Complex setup
  • Learning curve
  • Enterprise-focused
Amazon EventBridge logo

What is Amazon EventBridge?

Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that enables real-time response to state changes in your applications. Using an event bus, it collects data from multiple sources, processes and routes them between other AWS services or external SaaS providers. This simplifies the building of scalable and loosely coupled systems in event-driven architectures.

Suitable for:

  • Multiple systems syncing
  • Event-driven automation
  • Data processing
  • Tasks scheduling
  • Monitoring and auditing

Not suitable for:

  • Two-way communication
  • On-premises applications
  • Legacy systems
  • Complex event processing

Pros:

  • Event archive & replay
  • Serverless architecture
  • Event replay & filtering
  • Custom event buses

Cons:

  • Vendor lock-in
  • Complex access control
  • Low throughput

Compare Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge

Let’s compare Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge, looking at key dimensions such as their core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Disclaimer:This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Amazon API Gateway and on 1 Aug 2024 for Amazon EventBridge. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.

Core features
Pub/Sub messaging

Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Chat capabilities

Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

API Gateway does not natively support chat capabilities. However, this can be achieved using different AWS services like Lambda and DynamoDB.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Amazon EventBridge

No

State sync capabilities

Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

API Gateway does not natively support state synchronization, but it can be achieved through integration with services like Amazon DynamoDB, AWS AppSync, AWS Lambda, and Amazon S3.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Presence

Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

No

Occupancy

High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

API Gateway does not have built-in support for occupancy tracking. Occupancy tracking functionality requires integration with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, or ElastiCache.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

Message interactions are not natively supported in API Gateway. However, you can programmatically build interactions on the application layer with AWS Lambda.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Message history

Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

You can custom build message history functionality on Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3, but it's not supported natively in API Gateway.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Push notifications

Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

API Gateway doesn't natively support push notifications, but you can build them be integrating with Amazon SNS or AWS Amplify.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge does not support native push notifications. Notifications can be sent to communication channels by integrating with AWS Chatbot.

Message delta compression

Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

No

Programmatic management

Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Fully supported through AWS SDKs, the CLI, and CloudFormation.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Pricing
Free plan

With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

The Amazon API Gateway free tier includes one million API calls received for REST APIs, one million API calls received for HTTP APIs, and one million messages and 750,000 connection minutes for WebSocket APIs per month for up to 12 months.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Free access to AWS default service events for event buses. Custom events, third-party SaaS, and cross-account events are paid.

Pricing model

The pricing model should align with your project's expected load, usage patterns, and budget in order to be cost-effective and efficient.

Amazon API Gateway

API Gateway has a free plan and a pay-as-you-go plan:

  • Free plan: Up to one million API calls received for REST APIs, one million API calls received for HTTP APIs, and one million messages and 750,000 connection minutes for WebSocket APIs per month for up to 12 months.
  • PAYG plan: The first 1 billion requests per month cost $1.00 per million requests.
Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge has a limited free tier and a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of events published to EventBridge, the number of invocations, events replayed, and schema discovery. The cost varies based on the event type. You can read more about the pricing plan on Amazon's website.

Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.

Amazon API Gateway
  • Node.js
  • Javascript
  • React Native
  • Go
  • C++
  • Java
  • Kotlin
  • .NET
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Swift
Amazon EventBridge
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • .NET
  • Kotlin
  • Python
  • C++
  • Ruby
Supported realtime protocols

Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.

Amazon API Gateway
  • WebSockets
Amazon EventBridge
  • HTTPS
  • Webhooks
Serverless functions

Enables integration with third-party cloud providers by facilitating the execution of custom code against messages to perform business logic like on-the-fly translation.

Amazon API Gateway
  • AWS Lambda
Amazon EventBridge
  • AWS Lambda
Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Amazon API Gateway

No

API Gateway does not support message queueing, but Amazon SQS can.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Available through Amazon SQS.

Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Amazon API Gateway logs API calls, latency, and error rates to Amazon CloudWatch in your AWS account.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics.

CI/CD tools

Makes it possible to provision and configure service infrastructure as part of a CI or CD pipeline, enabling repeatable and reliable deployments.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
  • AWS CodeBuild
  • AWS CodeDeploy
Quality of Service
Scalability

Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance.

Amazon API Gateway

AWS API Gateway is scalable, supporting high connection rates, numerous routes and integrations, and long-lived connections without explicit concurrent connection limits. You can find more info on limits here.

Amazon EventBridge

No published metrics are available.

Guaranteed message delivery

Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge promises at-least-once event delivery. It will try to deliver an event to a target for up to 24 hours.

Guaranteed message ordering

Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

No

Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon EventBridge does not support exactly-once delivery semantics out of the box. It ensures at least-once delivery, but does not guarantee exactly-once delivery.

Performance & availability
Uptime Guarantee

An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime.

Amazon API Gateway

99.95%.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

99.99%.

Read more
Global edge network

By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

API Gateway API endpoints can be configured to be closer to where the majority of your traffic is originating from.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

API Gateway supports multi-region data replication only when integrated with Amazon CloudFront.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

No

No single point of failure or congestion

Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load.

Amazon API Gateway

No

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Latency

Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.

Amazon API Gateway

Unknown.

Amazon EventBridge

500ms global average latency

Read more
Security & compliance
API key authentication

Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Token-based authentication

Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge uses the AWS STS (Security Token Service) for token-based authentication.

Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

AWS API Gateway supports SSO by integrating with identity providers such as OpenID Connect (OIDC) and SAML.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through AWS SSO.

Rules for permissions and operations

Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Rules for permissions and operations can be configured using AWS Identity and Access Management.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

End-to-end encryption

Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit.

Amazon API Gateway

Yes

Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in Amazon API Gateway.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Encryption at rest

Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach.

Amazon API Gateway

Partial

It is possible to encrypt data at rest using AWS SDKs or AWS CLI when creating a file system. This is not done automatically.

Read more
Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Compliance

Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry.

Amazon API Gateway
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • PCI DSS Level 1
  • ISO 20000
  • ISO 22301
  • ISO 27001
  • ISO 27017
  • ISO 27701
Read more
Amazon EventBridge
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II

Alternatives to Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge

While both Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge are worth considering as options for realtime experiences, they aren’t without their limitations. We suggest evaluating them against the following alternatives to make sure you find the right solution for your needs.

Alternatives to Amazon API Gateway

Aws-appsync logo

AWS AppSync enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in real-time across multiple devices and users.

Socketio logo

Socket.IO is a library that provides realtime, bi-directional communication between clients and servers. It allows the management of connections, sending and receiving messages, and more.

Pusher logo

Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.

See more alternatives to Amazon API Gateway

Alternatives to Amazon EventBridge

tech provider image

TriggerMesh is a free and open-source AWS EventBridge alternative.

Azure-event-grid logo

Azure Event Grid is a Pub/Sub message routing service for creating event-driven architectures using MQTT and HTTP protocols.

tech provider image

Confluent Kafka is a scalable and distributed streaming platform that enables real-time data communications.

See more alternatives to Amazon EventBridge

Discover how Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon API Gateway and Amazon EventBridge on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Try Ably for free to discover the benefits for yourself

Ably has built reliable realtime infrastructure so you don’t have to. On our free plan you benefit from:

  • 6M monthly messages
  • 200 concurrent channels
  • 200 concurrent connections