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Amazon API Gateway vs Lightstreamer

This Amazon API Gateway vs Lightstreamer comparison was created based on reviews from developers and our best attempts to perform analysis by looking at documentation and other publicly available resources.

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Amazon API Gateway

Lightstreamer

Getting started and developer experience

Time to "hello world"

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Ratings were given based on the average amount of time it takes to sign up to a new account and publish the first message.

4 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example
2 / 5

5 = <30 min
4 = 30 min - 1 h
3 = 1-2 h
2 = 2-4 h
1 = 4+ h

View code example

Demos / Tutorials

A selection of online demos and tutorials so you can test and see the code in action.

Explore Ably's tutorials for our pub/sub messaging platform

Documentation

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's documentation for our pub/sub messaging platform
4.33 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

“The Amazon API Gateway documentation is broadly partitioned into getting started guides, tutorials, service features, references, and misc info, such as FAQs. The information architecture and navigation experience are mostly good. However, the developer journey is not straightforward since API Gateway works with other AWS services, such as IAM and AWS Lambda. You need to look at the respective products' documentation to understand how they work together with the API Gateway. The documentation provides tutorials for most API Gateway features, but the code examples are limited to Node.js and Python.”

2.50 / 5

Getting started guides / 5

Information architecture and developer journey / 5

API reference documentation / 5

Readability, design and navigation / 5

Quality of code / 5

Breadth and quality of tutorials / 5

“Lightstreamer documentation is overall disappointing. First of all, it’s all over the place in terms of format: from GitHub READMEs to the most basic of HTML pages to PDFs. There’s even a slide deck. Resources are seldom cross-linked, which makes the docs hard to follow. The entire design of the website is from the last century. It’s aesthetically hideous, and the navigation experience is underwhelming. The only positive things are the API reference, which is quite comprehensive, and the GitHub tutorials, which are explained well.“

Dashboard or dev console

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Sign up for free and explore Ably's pub/sub messaging platform
4.33 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

“The Amazon API Gateway console is easy to use, but only once you know your way around it. More tooltips and contextual help would have been great. The console provides ways of creating APIs and integrating them with backend services.  It also provides different metrics, such as the number of API calls and errors or latency-related stats. The console has all required core functionality for API configuration options such as updating, deleting, deploying, or integrating them with various services. The interface could do with a refresh, as the design is by no means visually appealing.”

4 / 5

Ease of use / 5

Stats and reports / 5

Functionality / 5

“Lightstreamer provides a monitoring dashboard that shows various realtime metrics and stats related to the server-side, such as connections, sessions, or throughput. The event log is pretty useful, showing successful operations/events, warnings, and errors. It’s intuitive and straightforward to use, although the UI is dull and ugly. Unfortunately, there’s no dev console or portal with more extensive functionality to allow you to create and manage resources.“

SDKs

Note: Only official SDKs were taken into account.

Explore Ably's 25+ SDKs for our pub/sub messaging platform

8 AWS SDKs to use the Amazon API Gateway service

Including:

  • JavaScript

  • Java

  • PHP

Note that when you create REST APIs with Amazon API Gateway, you can also generate client SDKs, enabling clients to call your REST APIs in a platform or language-specific way (e.g., JavaScript, Android, iOS).

10 production-ready client SDKs

Including:

  • Android

  • iOS

  • Node.js

API structure

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

4.25 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

“The Amazon API Gateway service APIs are part of the standard AWS SDKs. The API Gateway docs provide separate reference pages for each programming language. The APIs are largely consistent, barring some language-specific constructs. Once you learn your way around the console and go through the API reference, the APIs are pretty easy to use.”

3.25 / 5

API consistency across SDKs / 5

Well structured / 5

Intuitive / 5

Simple / 5

“Lightstreamer provides APIs covering many languages, operating systems, and development platforms, such as Java, .NET, JavaScript, or iOS. There’s a separate API reference page for each SDK - a highlight in otherwise mediocre documentation. The references are pretty detailed, and the APIs are fairly well structured and consistent across SDKs. But they aren’t simple, and it takes some time to wrap your head around them. They perhaps don’t have the most intuitive naming conventions, and the code samples included are not as clear as they could be“.

Amazon API Gateway

Lightstreamer

"Hello world" code example
// Note: The code below demonstrates how AWS API Gateway works with AWS Lambda

// AWS APIGateway configuration required to handle AWS Lambda service

'use strict';
console.log('Loading hello world function');
 
exports.handler = async (event) => {
    let name = "you";
    let city = 'World';
    let time = 'day';
    let day = '';
    let responseCode = 200;
    console.log("request: " + JSON.stringify(event));
    
    if (event.queryStringParameters && event.queryStringParameters.name) {
        console.log("Received name: " + event.queryStringParameters.name);
        name = event.queryStringParameters.name;
    }
    
    if (event.queryStringParameters && event.queryStringParameters.city) {
        console.log("Received city: " + event.queryStringParameters.city);
        city = event.queryStringParameters.city;
    }
    
    if (event.headers && event.headers['day']) {
        console.log("Received day: " + event.headers.day);
        day = event.headers.day;
    }
    
    if (event.body) {
        let body = JSON.parse(event.body)
        if (body.time) 
            time = body.time;
    }
 
    let greeting = `Good ${time}, ${name} of ${city}.`;
    if (day) greeting += ` Happy ${day}!`;

    let responseBody = {
        message: greeting,
        input: event
    };
    
    // The output from a Lambda proxy integration must be 
    // in the following JSON object. The 'headers' property 
    // is for custom response headers in addition to standard 
    // ones. The 'body' property  must be a JSON string. For 
    // base64-encoded payload, you must also set the 'isBase64Encoded'
    // property to 'true'.
    let response = {
        statusCode: responseCode,
        headers: {
            "x-custom-header" : "my custom header value"
        },
        body: JSON.stringify(responseBody)
    };
    console.log("response: " + JSON.stringify(response))
    return response;
};
// Lightstreamer server 

// Data adapter xml file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<adapters_conf id="HELLOWORLD">
    <metadata_provider>
        <adapter_class>com.lightstreamer.adapters.metadata.LiteralBasedProvider</adapter_class>
    </metadata_provider>
    <data_provider>
        <adapter_class>HelloWorldDataAdapter</adapter_class>
    </data_provider>
</adapters_conf>

// Package.json file for server requirements configuration

{
  "requires": true,
  "lockfileVersion": 1,
  "dependencies": {
    "lightstreamer-client-web": {
      "version": "8.0.2",
      "resolved": "https://registry.npmjs.org/lightstreamer-client-web/-/lightstreamer-client-web-8.0.2.tgz",
      "integrity": "sha512-UFEtoW+K2H+9PZNqdVGD6TqCBZNbsjC3TuZn5M1ee6D/aXlR8yzruKBXfQNdD0pgcpgpcKoMd/dyfeZxOf6EIg=="
    }
  }
}

// Lightstreamer client 

// HTML file with importing lightstreamer.min.js and require.js

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello World with Lightstreamer</title>
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.3.6/require.js"></script>
    <script src="lightstreamer.min.js" data-lightstreamer-ns="Ls"></script>
  </head>

  <body>
    <div data-source="lightstreamer" data-grid="hellogrid" data-item="greetings" data-field="message">loading...</div>
    <div data-source="lightstreamer" data-grid="hellogrid" data-item="greetings" data-field="timestamp">loading...</div>

Amazon API Gateway

Lightstreamer

Realtime features

Pub/Sub messaging

Pub/Sub is a design pattern that lets any number of publishers (producers) push messages to channels (also known as topics). Multiple subscribers (consumers) can subscribe to a channel to consume published messages.

Explore Ably's pub/sub messaging implementation

Message queues

A message queue is a form of asynchronous service-to-service communication. Messages are stored on a queue until they are processed. Note that each message is only consumed by one subscriber (consumer).

Explore Ably's message queues implementation

Limited

Queues are supported only via the Lightstreamer JMS Extender, which connects to any third-party JMS server and makes JMS (Java Message Service) available on the Web. Any HTML page running inside a web browser and any Node.js application instantly become JMS clients, able to publish and subscribe on JMS topics and queues.

Presence

Presence enables you to track the online and offline status of devices and end-users in real time and to store their state. Essential for chat apps and multiplayer games.

Explore Ably's presence implementation

Message history

Message history provides a means to retrieve previously published messages. For this to be possible, message data must be stored (persisted) somewhere.

Explore Ably's message history implementation

Connection state recovery (stream resume)

In the case of unreliable network conditions, clients may suddenly disconnect.Connection state recovery ensures that when they reconnect, the data stream resumes exactly where it left off.

Explore Ably' s connection state recovery implementation

Guaranteed message ordering

Ordering ensures that messages are delivered to consumers in the same order that producers publish them.

Explore Ably' s guaranteed message ordering implementation

Exactly-once semantics

Exactly-once is a system-wide data integrity guarantee that ensures each message is delivered to consumers exactly-once.

Explore Ably' s idempotent publishing implementation

Message delta compression

Message delta compression enables you to only send the changes from the previous message to subscribers each time there’s an update, instead of the entire message. Useful for use cases where there is a significant degree of similarity between successive messages.

Explore Ably' s message delta compression implementation

Native push notifications

Native push notifications can be used to deliver messages even when clients are offline. Useful for geolocation updates or news alerts.

Explore Ably's push notifications implementation

Webhooks

Webhooks provide a mechanism to get messages and other types of events (such as clients entering or leaving channels) pushed to your servers over HTTP.

Explore Ably's webhooks implementation

Serverless functions

A serverless function is essentially an isolated, single-purpose piece of code that is only executed when it’ triggered by an event. For example, you can use serverless functions to send a welcome message to clients when they become present on chat channels.

Note that serverless functions are usually fully managed by cloud vendors.

Explore Ably's serverless functions implementation

Limited

Can only trigger AWS Lambda functions. Amazon API Gateway doesn’t have in-built support for other serverless platforms, such as Azure Functions or Google Cloud Functions.

Built-in integrations

Which popular services & systems are Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer integrated with?

Explore Ably's library of integrations

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Webhooks

  • Custom
  • IFTTT
  • Zapier

Serverless functions

  • AWS Lambda
  • Cloudflare Workers
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Microsoft Azure Functions

Streaming

  • Apache Kafka
  • Apache Pulsar
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Amazon SQS
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP

Known limits and constraints

Find out practical limits, such as the maximum message size, or the maximum number of concurrent connections.

Explore the practical limits of the Ably pub/sub messaging platform

Throughput

10.000 requests per second (default quota)

Maximum message size

128 KB for WebSocket APIs

10 MB for REST APIs

Maximum number of channels

N/A

Maximum number of concurrent connections

Amazon API Gateway doesn't enforce a quota on concurrent connections. The maximum number of concurrent connections is determined by the rate of new connections per second and a maximum connection duration of two hours.

Throughput 

Depends on server capacity (Enterprise and Enterprise Ultimate packages). 

1 message/second for each subscription done by each client (community/free package).

Maximum message size 

Unknown

Maximum number of channels

Unknown

Maximum number of concurrent connections

Depends on server capacity

Supported development platforms, languages, open protocols and cloud models

Development platforms & operating systems

Which popular development platforms and operating systems do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support via official SDKs?

Explore the development platforms supported by Ably
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET
  • Android
  • Java / JVM
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • iPadOS
  • tvOS
  • watchOS
  • Mono
  • .NET

Languages

Which popular programming languages do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support via offical SDKs?

Explore the programming languages supported by Ably
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala
  • JavaScript
  • Node.js
  • TypeScript
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Flutter
  • Clojure
  • Scala

Open protocols

Which popular open protocols do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support?

Explore the open protocols supported by Ably
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks
  • WebSocket
  • HTTP
  • AMQP
  • MQTT
  • STOMP
  • SSE
  • Webhooks

Cloud models

Which popular cloud models do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support?

  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
  • Self-hosted
  • Cloud-managed
  • Serverless
  • Globally-distributed
Global and reliable edge service

Edge messaging network with latency-based routing

Latency-based routing ensures that clients are always routed to the nearest datacenter and point of presence.

Explore Ably's routing mechanism that mitigates network and DNS issues

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

Multi-region data replication (storage) protects against single points of failure and ensures message data durability.

Learn how Ably ensures message durability

Uptime SLAs

Here’s what the most common SLAs amount to in terms of downtime over a calendar year:

99.999% SLA = 5m 15s downtime per year

99.99% SLA = 52m 35s downtime per year

99.95% SLA = 4h 22m 58s downtime per year

99.9% SLA = 8h 45m 56s downtime per year

99% SLA = 3d 15h 39m 29s downtime per year

Source: https://uptime.is/

99.95%

Unknown

Quality of Service

What QoS guarantees do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer provide natively?

Explore Ably's availability and uptime guarantees for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
  • Multi-region data replication (storage)
  • Exactly-once semantics
  • Guaranteed message ordering
  • Connection state recovery (stream resume)
Security

API key authentication

The simplest way to authenticate. Involves using private API keys that you can usually create and edit via a dashboard. Recommended to be used server-side, as private API keys shouldn’t be shared with untrusted parties.

Explore Ably's implementation of API key authentication

Limited

Lightstreamer authentication involves the usage of user & password credentials.

Token-based authentication

Which popular token-based authentication mechanisms do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support?

Note that token-based authentication is usually the recommended strategy on the client-side as it provides more fine-grained access control and limits the risk of credentials being compromised.

Explore Ably's implementation of token-based authentication
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs
  • Ephemeral tokens
  • JWTs

Configurable rules and permissions

Which types of configurable rules and permissions do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support?

Explore Ably's configurable rules and permissions
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights
  • API keys rules and permissions
  • Operation rules and permissions
  • Admin rights

Message encryption

Which types of message encryption do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer support?

Explore Ably's message encryption mechanisms
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Encrypted in transit
  • Message payload encryption

Formal certifications

Which formal certifications are Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer compliant with?

Explore Ably's security and compliance for our pub/sub messaging platform
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
Pricing & Support

Free package

What do the free packages offered by Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer consist of?

Explore Ably's free package for our pub/sub messaging platform

The Amazon API Gateway free package includes one million API calls received for REST APIs, one million API calls for HTTP APIs, one million messages, and 750,000 connection minutes for WebSocket APIs per month for up to 12 months. Beyond the 12 months, there is no free package.

Lightstreamer’s free package (the community edition) provides a license for one server and unlimited clients. However, the message rate is throttled at one message per second, and some features are unavailable (such as clustering or TLS support).

Pricing model

How are the Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer pricing models calculated?

Explore Ably's pricing model for our pub/sub messaging platform

Amazon API Gateway pricing is usage-based and calculated per month.

HTTP APIs

You pay for the number of API calls per month:

- $1 per million calls for the first 300 million. 

- For 300+ million calls, the price is $0.90 per million.

REST APIs

You pay for the number of requests per month:

- $3.50 per million calls for the first 333 million requests. 

- For the next 667 million requests, the price is $2.80 per million.

You can optionally provision dedicated caching for REST APIs, which is also charged. For example, the price for a cache memory size of 237 GB is $3.80 per hour.

WebSocket APIs

You pay for message transfer (requests) and connection minutes:

- $1 per million requests per month (for the first 1 billion. If you exceed 1 billion requests, the pricing is $0.80 per million). 

- $0.25 per million connection minutes. 

Note that we have used US East (Ohio) as a reference point, but the pricing values differ across regions.

You may also incur additional charges for external data transfers or if you use Amazon API Gateway in conjunction with other AWS services (such as AWS Lambda).

Lightstreamer has a complex and confusing pricing model. First, you must choose between the community edition (free) and the enterprise edition (paid). When you select enterprise, you must then opt between the Enterprise or the Enterprise Ultimate package (the latter includes all client APIs, superior message rates, and all features). On top of this, you must choose a licensing scheme, of which there are six options in total. Some examples: Perpetual Upfront per Server License, Monthly Pay-as-you-go Per Core-Hour License, Annual Upfront per Client Licence.

Once you choose a licensing scheme, you must also choose a license type, such as Demo, Evaluation, Production, or Hot-Standby.

There’s no transparency regarding cost estimation or concrete numbers (at least not on their website).

Enterprise package

What benefits do the Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer enterprise packages offer?

Explore Ably's enterprise package for our pub/sub messaging platform

There is no Amazon API Gateway-specific enterprise package.

Lightstreamer has an Enterprise Ultimate package that includes all client APIs (different programming languages), provides unlimited messages without throttling, and grants access to all features.

Community

Reviewed by 3+ independent developers

Explore Ably's community support channel for our pub/sub messaging platform
4.50 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

“Among the AWS ecosystem, Amazon API Gateway seems to be one of the most popular products, which makes sense since it allows you to build your very own APIs. There are many GitHub repos created by the community, some of which have hundreds of stars. There are over 5000 questions on Stack Overflow under the aws-api-gateway tag, some of which have hundreds of thousands of views. It’s a big, active, and interested community.”

2 / 5

Presence on multiple channels / 5

Size and activity / 5

“The Lightstreamer community is small. There is some activity going on on the Lightstreamer forums - usually people raising issues and asking for clarifications that arguably should have been clear from the documentation. Beyond forums, the Lightstreamer community is basically non-existent. There are only about 30 threads in total on Stack Overflow, and, although there are over 140 Lightstreamer repos on GitHub, they barely have a few stars or open issues and almost no pull requests.“

Support

What types of support options and response times do Amazon API Gateway and Lightstreamer offer?

Explore Ably's support options for our pub/sub messaging platform

General support options

Email, support ticket, phone, technical documentation, community support (e.g. forums or Stack Overflow). 

Enterprise support

Amazon offers an enterprise package, which includes 24/7 phone, email, and chat access to Cloud Support Engineers, Infrastructure Event Management support, and a designated technical account manager.

Response time

< 24 hours for general guidance queries

< 1 hour for Production system down incidents (only applies to Business & Enterprise support packages).

General support options

Email, support forums, phone, technical documentation.

Enterprise support

Lightstreamer provides 8x5 and 24x7 technical support for enterprise and enterprise ultimate packages.

Response time

Unknown

Disclaimer: The information presented for Amazon API Gateway was last updated on 17 December 2020 and on 7 December 2020 for Lightstreamer. It is possible that some details may now be out of date. If you think that’s the case, please let us know so we can update them. In any case, you should not rely solely on the information presented here and must check with each provider before deciding to integrate or buy any of these two solutions.


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