API Connect offerings

There are three subscription tiers of API Connect offerings, providing increasing capabilities.

Essentials: API Connect Essentials is designed for developers, and is available at no charge. This offering has less functionality than the two other offerings, and does not include IBM support. Essentials uses the Micro Gateway.
Professional: API Connect Professional builds on the Essentials offering, is suited to department-level environments, and includes IBM support. It provides greater functionality than API Connect Essentials, but is limited in comparison to the Enterprise offering.
Enterprise: API Connect Enterprise adds further capability to the Professional offering, and is aimed at enterprise-level environments. API Connect Enterprise provides advanced analytics, and includes the DataPower® Gateway.

Important: IBM® API Connect Micro Gateway is deprecated in IBM API Connect Version 5.0.8 in favor of DataPower Gateway. From 1 April 2020, Micro Gateway, and associated toolkit CLI commands, will no longer be supported. Existing users can migrate their API definitions to IBM DataPower Gateways. For information on supported API policies, see Built-in policies.

Table 1. Full breakdown of each offering in relation to the API Lifecycle
	Essential (Free)	Professional	Enterprise
Create	Auto generation of API models Visual API creation Single click build/package/deploy Data source connectors: REST, SOAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Couchbase, Cloudant, DB2, Neo4j, Kafka, Memory, Mail Advanced connectors for development and test OpenAPI (Swagger 2.0) support, ACL	All of the functionality that Essentials possesses Advanced Connectors for development, test, or production use: SOAP, DB2, Oracle, MS SQL, SAP HANA	All of the functionality that the Professional offering possesses
Run	Node and Java compute instances	All of the functionality that Essentials possesses Basic clustering of Node and Java in a single data center Unified Management via single console	All of the functionality that the Professional offering possesses Clustering in multiple data centers Java: Advance clustering (auto-scaling), Log analytics, health management
Manage	API Manager (only one instance) Developer Portal (only one instance) REST and SOAP API support Policy Assembly UX Version and lifecyle management API Discovery API analytics (limited)	All of the functionality that Essentials possesses API Manager (up to two instances in a single data center) Developer Portal clustering (up to three instances in a single data center) API Manager (limited to installation in a single data center) Developer Portal clustering (limited to installation in a single data center)	All of the functionality that the Professional offering possesses In excess of three instances in a single data center Multiple data center deployments API Analytics (full) Create and maintain subscription plans with billing that customers can provide a credit card number and use your APIs.
Secure	Programmable Micro Gateway (only one instance) Programmable Micro Gateway (only one instance per Catalog) HTTP 1.1, HTTPS 1.1 REST API Proxy support SOAP API Proxy support Built-in policies supported by Micro Gateway: Client ID/Secret Basic Auth Basic rate limiting CORS Invoke (call service over HTTP) Set Variable JavaScript invoke	All of the functionality that Essentials possesses Micro Gateway (up to two instances in a single data center) Micro Gateway (limited to installation in a single data center)	All of the functionality that the Professional offering possesses DataPower Gateway Virtual: In excess of three instances in a single data center Multiple data center deployment API Management V4 parity Additional built-in policies supported by DataPower Gateway: OAuth, Advanced rate limiting, Redaction, Map, Activity Log, REST validation, GatewayScript invoke, XSLT invoke, SOAP/XML schema validation, JSON to/from XML transform, Response caching Utilize existing DataPower Gateway functionality as user-defined policies