API SECURITY PLATFORM

API Security Sizing Calculator & Vendor Comparison 2025

Calculate API security platform costs. Compare 10 leading API security vendors with Q3 2025 pricing based on API calls, API count, and coverage requirements.

10
Vendors
AI
Powered
Q3
2025 Pricing

What is API Security and Why Sizing Matters

API Security protects application programming interfaces from attacks, abuse, and data breaches. Modern API security platforms provide API discovery, runtime threat detection, vulnerability assessment, authentication/authorization enforcement, rate limiting, and protection against OWASP API Top 10 threats including broken authentication, excessive data exposure, and injection attacks.

🔐 Why API Security Sizing is Critical

Under-licensing leaves APIs unmonitored—APIs represent 80-90% of modern application traffic and are the #1 data breach vector. Over-licensing wastes $50K-200K annually. Our calculator helps you size based on API call volume and API count, not total infrastructure.

💰 Pricing Models Explained

API security vendors charge per million API calls ($0.10-0.30/M calls) or per API ($200-1000/API/month) or hybrid pricing. We normalize to call-based pricing for comparison. Enterprise pricing includes unlimited APIs, ML threat detection, and WAF integration.

📊 Real Production Data

Our sizing comes from 150+ enterprise API security deployments. We account for shadow API discovery (2-5x more APIs than documented), seasonal traffic spikes (200-400% during peak), and microservices explosion (50-200 internal APIs typical).

Key Factors in API Security Sizing

  • API Call Volume: Monthly API calls (millions). Include external APIs (customer-facing) + internal APIs (microservices). Typical: 10-100M calls for mid-market, 500M-5B+ for enterprise. Monitor for 30 days before sizing—surprises common.
  • API Discovery: Most organizations don't know how many APIs they have. Documented APIs: 20-50. Shadow APIs discovered: 100-250. API security platforms discover 2-5x more APIs than expected. Budget for the discovered total.
  • API Types: REST APIs ($0.10-0.15/M calls), GraphQL APIs ($0.15-0.20/M calls—more complex), gRPC/microservices ($0.15-0.25/M calls), Third-party APIs ($0.20-0.30/M calls—higher risk). Pricing varies by complexity.
  • Threat Detection Level: Basic discovery + monitoring ($0.10-0.15/M calls) vs. ML-powered threat detection ($0.15-0.20/M calls) vs. Advanced with behavioral analysis and bot detection ($0.20-0.30/M calls). Choose based on sensitivity of data exposed via APIs.
  • Integration Requirements: Standalone API security vs. Integration with WAF ($+20-30%) vs. Integration with API gateway ($+30-40%) vs. Full DevSecOps integration with CI/CD ($+40-60%). Modern architectures need full integration.

Common API Security Sizing Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Mistake #1: Only counting documented APIs. Shadow APIs (undocumented, forgotten, legacy) represent 50-80% of total APIs. Budget for 2-5x your documented API count after discovery.

❌ Mistake #2: Underestimating API call volume. Manual API call estimates are 40-60% too low. Run actual traffic monitoring for 30 days. Include internal microservice-to-microservice calls (often 10-20x external traffic).

❌ Mistake #3: Not planning for traffic spikes. E-commerce sees 200-400% traffic increases during holidays/sales. Retail APIs spike 300-500% on Black Friday. Size for peak, not average, to avoid overage charges.

❌ Mistake #4: Treating all APIs equally. Public customer-facing APIs handling PII/payment data need advanced threat detection. Internal low-risk APIs can use basic monitoring. Risk-tier your APIs to optimize costs.

Calculate Your API Security Requirements

Adjust parameters to see personalized pricing

API Security Scope

100M
🛡️

Ready to Calculate

Configure your API security requirements to see pricing.