Hello folks, what is difference between API Gateway and Load balancer is one of the popular Microservice interview question and often asked to experienced Java developers during telephonic or face-to-face round. In the past, I have shared essential Microservices design principles and best practices as well popular Microservices design patterns and in this article, I will answer this question and also tell you key differences between them.

While, API Gateway and Load Balancer are both important components in microservices architecture, but they serve different purposes.

API Gateway acts as a single entry point for all API requests and provides features such as request routing, rate limiting, authentication, and API versioning and also hide the complexities of the underlying microservices from the client applications.

Load Balancer, on the other hand, is responsible for distributing incoming request across multiple instances of a microservice to improve availability, performance, and scalability. It helps to evenly distribute the workload across multiple instances and ensures that each instance is utilized to its fullest potential.

In other words, API Gateway provides higher-level features related to API management, while Load Balancer provides lower-level features related to traffic distribution across multiple instances of a microservice.

Now, that you know the basics, let’s see each of them in bit more detail to understand the differences as well as learn when to use them, and if you haven’t joined Medium yet then I also suggest you to join Medium to read your favorite stories without interruption and learn from great authors and developers.