Skip to content
releo

API glossary

What is an API gateway?

An API gateway is a server that sits in front of one or more APIs and handles cross-cutting concerns such as routing, authentication, rate limiting, logging and version routing.

API gateway, explained

Gateways centralise policy so individual services do not each reimplement it. They are also a natural place to route traffic between API versions, add Deprecation and Sunset headers, and capture traffic for analysis.

Gateways manage traffic; they do not verify that a change to the API behind them is safe for consumers.

  • Rate limiting: Rate limiting caps how many requests a client can make to an API in a given time window, protecting the service from overload and abuse.
  • API versioning: API versioning is the practice of exposing multiple versions of an API at once so providers can ship breaking changes while existing clients keep using the version they were built for.
  • Sunset header: The Sunset header (RFC 8594) is an HTTP response header that gives the date after which a resource is expected to stop responding.

Coming soon

Ship API changes without breaking your customers.

Releo is in private beta. Join the waitlist for early access.