Optimizing API Gateway Strategies: Navigating Action-Based Pricing and Endpoint Design
When selecting an API gateway solution for your application, one critical consideration is understanding how pricing models impact architecture. Recently, I’ve been exploring options, and one vendor’s approach caught my attention: they base their charges on the number of “actions” (or “endpoints”) exposed through the API.
The Challenge of Action-Centric Pricing
In our current API design, we employ controllers—such as a WidgetsController—that include standard CRUD actions: CreateWidget, GetWidgets, UpdateWidget, and DeleteWidget. Additionally, we sometimes define specialized actions tailored to specific use cases, like GetWidgetsForScenario1 or GetWidgetsForScenario2. These specialized endpoints serve distinct business logic paths, providing clarity and separation within our interface.
Importantly, our backend maintains a DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle, with shared service layers consolidating common logic. The use-case-specific actions primarily exist to improve code organization and readability, not to duplicate functionality.
Vendor Recommendations and Concerns
The API provider suggests reducing the number of endpoints by consolidating these specialized actions into fewer, more versatile endpoints that accept parameters or flags to modify behavior—often managed by their gateway tooling. While this approach may streamline the API surface, it raises questions about architectural clarity, maintainability, and the potential for increased internal complexity.
From our perspective, this suggestion seems driven more by their pricing model than by genuine architectural necessity. It appears to encourage an API design that consolidates multiple logical operations into single endpoints, potentially complicating internal logic and response handling.
Future Considerations and Response Variability
We are also contemplating adding new actions in the future that will return significantly different response payloads based on parameters. This dynamic behavior further complicates whether consolidating endpoints makes sense, or if keeping narrowly scoped actions is preferable for clarity and maintainability.
Key Question: What’s the Best Approach?
Does merging multiple specialized actions into a singular, complex endpoint offer tangible benefits in terms of performance or scalability? Or does maintaining distinct, narrowly focused endpoints promote better code clarity, ease of testing, and future flexibility—even if it results in a larger number of API routes?
Seeking Insights from the Community
I’m eager to hear from developers and architects who have navigated similar challenges—particularly those who have faced action-based pricing strategies or designed large-scale APIs with many specialized endpoints. How have you balanced the
