Reverse Proxy vs API Gateway vs Load Balancer

System Design Fundamentals

Reverse Proxy — Anonymity and Protection

image source=digitalocean

A reverse proxy is a server that sits between client devices and backend web servers, intercepting and forwarding client requests to the appropriate server.

Characteristics:

• Acts as an intermediary for client requests
• Can handle SSL encryption/decryption
• Provides caching capabilities
• Offers basic load balancing features
• Can compress server responses

When to use:

• To add a security layer in front of web applications
• For SSL offloading to reduce backend server load
• To implement caching for improved performance
• When basic load balancing is needed
• To present a unified frontend for distributed backend systems

API Gateway — Route, Rate-Limit, Enrich, Auth

image source = byte byte go

API gateway is a management tool that sits between…