Understanding API Gateway Pricing: Navigating Action-Based Models and Architectural Best Practices

When designing API architectures, selecting the right API gateway solution is critical. As organizations evaluate different providers, a common concern arises around pricing models, particularly those based on the number of “actions” or “endpoints.” This article explores the implications of such pricing structures and offers insights into best practices for API design that balance cost efficiency, maintainability, and scalability.

The Scenario: Multiple Actions and Endpoints

Consider a typical backend setup where your system employs controllers with multiple actions—such as CreateWidget, GetWidgets, UpdateWidget, and DeleteWidget. These actions are often organized to adhere to RESTful principles, ensuring clarity and separation of concerns.

Some teams adopt a pattern where specific actions cater to distinct use cases—for example, GetWidgetsForUseCase1 versus GetWidgetsForUseCase2. While this approach enhances understanding and aligns with particular business logic, it can lead to an increasing number of narrowly scoped endpoints.

Vendor Concerns: Action-Based Pricing

Certain API gateway providers specify their charges based on the number of actions or endpoints exposed. They may recommend consolidating multiple specific actions into fewer, more generic endpoints—using parameters, flags, or request headers to distinguish behavior internally. The rationale often centers on reducing costs by lowering the total number of endpoints.

However, this consolidation raises questions about architectural quality and flexibility. Will combining multiple behaviors into a single endpoint lead to complex, hard-to-maintain code? Does it impact performance? And importantly, is the cost savings justifying potential downsides?

Balancing Architectural Clarity and Cost

Benefits of Narrowly Scoped Endpoints:

• Clarity and Maintainability: Each endpoint has a well-defined purpose, making the codebase easier to understand, extend, and test.
• Separation of Concerns: Changes to one use case are less likely to inadvertently affect others.
• Flexible Response Types: Endpoints can return tailored response objects optimized for a specific use case, improving client-side usability.

Potential Downsides:

• Endpoint Proliferation: Many endpoints can complicate the API surface, increasing documentation overhead.
• Increased Management Effort: More endpoints require rigorous versioning, deployment, and monitoring.
• Pricing Implications: Some API gateways charge per endpoint or action, making extensive endpoint proliferation costly.

Consolidation Approach:

On the other hand, consolidating multiple actions into fewer