Apigee Pay-as-you-go environment types

This page applies to Apigee, but not to Apigee hybrid.

View Apigee Edge documentation.

Apigee's Pay-as-you-go pricing attributes are based in part upon the environment types you attach to your Apigee instance. An environment is a unit of infrastructure within an organization where you can create and deploy API proxies. When you provision an Apigee organization using the Pay-as-you-go pricing model, an Intermediate environment is created in your organization. After the organization is provisioned, you can add additional environments of any type to your organization.

The Apigee Pay-as-you-go pricing model introduces three different types of deployment environments, with varying costs:

With the ability to use multiple types of environments in a single organization, you can create a pricing scheme tailored to your usage. This topic addresses the features, limitations, and recommended use cases for each environment type.

Base environment type

When you select a Base environment to attach to your Apigee instance, you can do the following:

As the lowest-cost environment type, the Base environment is recommended for the following API management use cases:

  • Proxying API traffic for prototyping, internal development, or small-scale applications.
  • Onboarding your program to Apigee and maintaining low ongoing costs.
  • Implementing a fully-managed gateway with the option to add advanced capabilities when required.

Intermediate environment type

With an Intermediate environment attached to your Apigee instance, you can access all the functionality of the Base environment type, along with the following:

With these expanded capabilities, the Intermediate environment is recommended for the following API management use cases:

  • Building and publishing API products for developers.
  • Managing a portfolio of APIs with growing adoption.
  • Performing complex transformations or mediations in your API traffic.

* The Monetization add-on is currently unavailable for purchase.

Comprehensive environment type

If you attach a Comprehensive environment to your Apigee instance, you can access all the functionality of the Intermediate environment type, along with the ability to do following:

  • Perform at-scale deployments with multiple regions.
  • Purchase additional proxy deployments per environment.
  • Access high-performance operational tools like auto-scaling QPS, debug masking, and distributed tracing (Preview).

The Comprehensive environment is recommended for API management use cases that require:

  • Supporting mission critical applications with high reliability and performance.
  • Maintaining precision control over API operations.

Comparison of environment types

The following table provides a comparison of the features and limitations of each environment type:

Base Intermediate Comprehensive
Max environment per org 5 5 Up to limit (85)
Standard API Proxy Yes Yes Yes
Extensible API Proxy No Yes Yes
Shared Flows N/A Available Available
Proxy deployment units* per environment per region 20 included per environment 50 included per environment 100 included per environment, ability to purchase up to limit (4250)
API Products and Developer Portals N/A Available Available
Add-ons N/A Apigee API Analytics, Advanced API Security, Monetization** (for purchase) Apigee API Analytics, Advanced API Security, Monetization** (for purchase)
Max throughput Up to 50 QPS Up to 100 QPS Autoscaled QPS
Multi-region support N/A N/A Available
SLA up to 99% up to 99% 99.9% for environments deployed to 1 region

99.99% for environments deployed to 2 or more regions

* Proxy deployment unit = 1 API proxy (standard or extensible) or 1 shared flow revision deployment.

** The Monetization add-on is currently unavailable for purchase.

Add or remove environments

If you have an Apigee organization provisioned with Pay-as-you-go pricing, you can create additional environments of any type, up to the limits specified in Comparison of environment types.

When you create a new environment, you can deploy any existing proxies to the new environment. If an environment is no longer required, you can undeploy your proxies and delete the environment to prevent any Pay-as-you-go charges from accruing.

Update types for existing environments

Alternatively, you can upgrade or downgrade the type of an existing environment to add or remove feature capabilities and manage your Apigee Pay-as-you-go billing and resource usage.

For example, you can:
  • Upgrade a Base environment type to an Intermediate environment type to use Shared Flows in your deployments.
  • Downgrade an Intermediate environment that contains only Standard API proxies to a Base environment type to decrease environment usage costs.

For more information on using the Apigee APIs or Apigee UI in the Google Cloud console to change the type of an existing environment, see Update Pay-as-you-go environment types.

If your API management program grows beyond the capabilities provided by the Comprehensive environment type, you can speak to your Google Cloud sales specialist about available Subscription pricing plans.

What's next?

For more information about environment types, see: