Amazon API Gateway vs Cloudflare Durable Objects
Discover how Amazon API Gateway compares to Cloudflare Durable Objects , and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
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.
What is Cloudflare Durable Objects ?
Cloudflare Durable Objects provides an easy way to manage stateful objects with low-latency access and real-time updates. It enables developers to create collaborative, real-time applications using WebSocket connections, ensuring data persistence and consistent performance across distributed clients.
Compare Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects
Let’s compare Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects , 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 Cloudflare Durable Objects . The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Amazon API Gateway and on 10 Oct 2024 for Cloudflare Durable Objects . 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects does not have built-in pub/sub. However, Cloudflare has an MQTT-powered pub/sub service in private beta which can be integrated with Durable Objects. Read more |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects can implement some chat features, but some require additional Cloudflare services or custom development. File sharing would require integration with Cloudflare R2 for file storage. |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Amazon API Gateway Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects can support collaboration capabilities, but require integration with storage services like Cloudflare Workers KV for features like avatar stacks and location data. |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects 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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects does not natively support presence; it requires custom implementation. |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Amazon API Gateway No | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects supports the Brotli and gzip compression algorithms for all responses, rather than delta compression. |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Programmatic management is possible through the Durable Objects REST API. |
| 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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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:
| Cloudflare Durable Objects Cloudflare Durable Objects is only available on a pay-as-you-go plan. The plan offers 1 million requests and then $0.15/million requests. Connections to Durable Objects are billed as one request. Read more |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Amazon API Gateway
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
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Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Amazon API Gateway
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
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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
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
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Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Amazon API Gateway | Cloudflare Durable Objects No Cloudflare Durable Objects itself doesn't directly support specific message brokers or streaming platforms. Instead, it provides a runtime environment where you can implement your own logic. |
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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial For observability, Cloudflare Durable Objects can be integrated with Baselime, or can be retrieved with Cloudflare's GraphQL Analytics API. Read more |
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:
| Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Supports:
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| 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Durable Objects scale horizontally across many objects as needed. Each single object can handle up to 1,000 requests per second. Read more |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Amazon API Gateway No | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve guaranteed message delivery. Read more |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve guaranteed message ordering. Read more |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Partial Cloudflare Durable Objects requires integration with Cloudflare Queues to achieve exactly-once message delivery. Read more |
| 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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Cloudflare offers Business customers a 100% uptime SLA with service credits for any failures, while Enterprise customers have separate agreements. 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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Read more |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects 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. | Cloudflare Durable Objects Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Amazon API Gateway Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Amazon API Gateway Yes | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects No |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Data in transit is encrypted via TLS/SSL. |
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 | Cloudflare Durable Objects Yes Cloudflare encrypts all users' data at rest using the AES-256 standard. |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Amazon API Gateway
| Cloudflare Durable Objects
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Alternatives to Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects
While both Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects 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 enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in real-time across multiple devices and users.
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 is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
Alternatives to Cloudflare Durable Objects
Amazon API Gateway is a service for building, deploying, and managing APIs.
AWS AppSync enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in real-time across multiple devices and users.
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.
Discover how Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon API Gateway and Cloudflare Durable Objects 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
