just a quick thought...
Developer tier APIM enjoys many "premium" features such as vnet injection.
| Feature | Consumption | Developer | Basic | Basic v2 | Standard | Standard v2 | Premium | Premium v2 (preview) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Entra integration1 | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual network injection support | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Private endpoint support for inbound connections | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Outbound virtual network integration support | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Multi-region deployment | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Availability zones | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Multiple custom domain names for gateway | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Developer portal2 | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in cache | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| External cache | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Autoscaling | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| API analytics | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted gateway3 | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Workspaces | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| TLS settings | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Client certificate authentication | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Policies4 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Credential manager | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Backup and restore | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Management over Git | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Azure Monitor metrics | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Azure Monitor and Log Analytics request logs | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Application Insights request logs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Static IP | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Export API to Power Platform | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export API to Postman | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export API to MCP server (preview) | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Expose existing MCP server (preview) | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Feature-based comparison of Azure API Management tiers | Microsoft Learn
It however comes with weaknesses like no SLA guaranteed since it's designed for non-production use cases and evaluations in the first place.
For projects that benefit from the ROI of developer tier APIM and would like to have more control over APIM service availability, developer tier + self-hosted gateway might be an option. One example use case here is to provision an Azure VM and then setup self-hosted gateway on the VM. This way users are able to manage and maintain the underlying VM and avoid events like VM Guest OS upgrade during business hours that would have caused service disruptions on developer tier APIM.
Just a quick thought...
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