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What is the difference between a proxy, load balancer and API gateway?

By Reejan R Gopan · Full-Stack Software Engineer, Dubai, UAE

  • Forward proxy — sits in front of *clients* and controls their outbound requests
  • Reverse proxy — sits in front of *origin servers* and routes incoming traffic (TLS termination, caching, compression)
  • Load balancer — spreads work across instances, with health and readiness checks
  • API gateway — adds centralised routing, authentication policies, quotas and observability for many APIs

Their functions overlap, so use managed capabilities instead of multiplying hops. An API gateway is only worth it for multi-API routing and quotas beyond what your edge or runtime already does.

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