Optimizing API Gateway Strategies: Balancing Endpoint Granularity and Cost Efficiency

In the ongoing pursuit of efficient API architecture, many teams encounter the challenge of selecting an appropriate approach to endpoint design—particularly when faced with pricing models that depend on the number of “actions” or “endpoints.” Here, I’ll explore the considerations involved in balancing architectural clarity, performance, and cost implications.

Understanding the Context

Suppose your backend follows conventional RESTful principles, with controllers like WidgetsController offering standard actions such as CreateWidget, GetWidgets, UpdateWidget, and DeleteWidget. Additionally, you might create specialized actions like GetWidgetsForUseCase1 and GetWidgetsForUseCase2 to encapsulate specific business logic or filtering criteria. These specialized endpoints serve to keep the codebase clear and maintainable by separating concerns and avoiding overly complex request-handling logic.

The Vendor Perspective

A recent vendor discussion highlighted a common advice: consolidate multiple specialized endpoints into a single, more versatile endpoint that leverages request parameters or flags to determine behavior. While this can reduce the total number of endpoints—potentially lowering costs—it raises questions about architectural soundness. Vendors often promote such strategies, accompanied by tooling to handle complex internal logic, but it’s worth evaluating whether this aligns with your team’s goals.

Architectural Considerations

• Maintainability and Readability: Focused, narrowly scoped endpoints tend to be more straightforward to understand, test, and debug. They reflect specific use cases clearly, aiding future development and troubleshooting.

• Performance Impacts: Combining multiple behaviors into a single endpoint can introduce complex conditional logic. If not carefully managed, this may impact response times or make error handling more intricate.

• Scalability and Flexibility: As your API evolves, you might need to add new use cases or responses. Having dedicated endpoints simplifies integrating new features without risking unintended side effects.

• Cost Implications: Pricing models based on the number of actions can incentivize consolidation, but this may be at odds with best practices in API design. Bear in mind that efforts to reduce the number of endpoints should not compromise clarity or performance.

Future Developments and Design Dilemmas

Another layer of complexity involves plans to introduce endpoints that return markedly different data structures based on request context, which raises the question: How much should you embed varying behaviors into a single endpoint? While consolidating endpoints might seem advantageous, it can lead to bloated logic and reduced transparency.

Best