API Gateway vs Load Balancer: Which is Right for Your Application?

API gateways and load balancers are essential tools for optimizing modern web applications, each serving unique yet complementary roles. A load balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to enhance system responsiveness and reliability, preventing server overload and managing server health. It can perform advanced tasks like HTTPS offloading and content-aware routing, making it invaluable for services supported by multiple servers. On the other hand, an API gateway acts as an intermediary between API consumers and APIs, adding higher-level functionalities such as traffic control, authentication, and metrics collection, which enhance security, observability, and reliability in distributed networks. While API gateways can perform some load balancing tasks, they are not direct substitutes for load balancers. Together, they create a robust architecture that supports growing demands by balancing loads, implementing caching and rate limiting, and collecting detailed usage metrics, improving service quality, security, performance, and reliability.