5 Best Developer Portals to Consider in 2025 for Faster API Adoption | Popular Examples of Great Internal Portals

In the world of AI-driven software development and MCP server revolution, Developer Portals can no longer remain static documentation repositories. Alongside classic API catalog, key generation, and support channels, great DevPortals should now offer multi-gateway functionality, agent-to-agent integration, granular access control, and ability to work via developers’ favorite tools, like GitHub, Jira, and others.

In this blog post, the team at Apiboost explains what a successful API Developer Portal should include in 2025, as well as defines 5 examples of the best Developer Portals. Stay tuned.

Why Developer Experience Matters When Choosing an Internal Platform?

Although developers are not the only user role who benefits from an API Developer Portal, there would not be a portal without the developers. Their expectations play a crucial role in shaping the DevPortal’s structure, features, and content.

Developer experience (DX) is the make-or-break factor for API adoption. When the portal feels effortless to use, developers move faster, integrate sooner, and retain. When it’s inconsistent or a pain to navigate, software engineers quietly walk away and your API remains in the shade.

You won’t get bug reports. You won’t get feedback. You’ll just get silence. DX isn’t about impressing developers but rather about removing every barrier between their idea and a working integration.

Why DX matters for an internal DevPortal:

• Speeds up onboarding: The quicker developers find what they need, the sooner they deliver.

• Cuts support load: Clear docs and self-service tools mean fewer tickets.

• Boosts adoption: A smooth experience keeps development teams choosing your APIs over workarounds.

• Improves collaboration: Shared workspaces bring teams together, driving higher quality and sparking innovation.

→ Read more: Developer Experience First: 5 Must-Have API Portal Features That Drive API Adoption

Ensure Success of Your API Program: Must-Have DevPortal Features in the Era of AI

Artificial Intelligence is transforming developer portals from static documentation repositories into intelligent, dynamic platforms that actively drive API adoption. Modern portals should be equipped to keep pace with rapid changes in the API and AI ecosystems by offering continuous updates, multi-gateway support, and embedded AI assistants that work directly within a developer’s existing toolchain.

However, AI in developer portals must be implemented thoughtfully to avoid pitfalls such as security lapses, privacy concerns, inaccurate outputs, and overwhelming users with unnecessary features. The real value lies in AI capabilities that respect governance rules, reduce support tickets, and accelerate time-to-first-call. 

When paired with strong governance, transparent AI use, and role-specific personalization, a modern developer portal makes a shift from a documentation hub towards a strategic growth engine that sustains engagement, fosters partnerships, and maximizes 

digital revenue growth.

5 Best Developer Portals For Your APIs Program in 2025

Now let’s take a closer look at 5 best developer portals you should consider for your API program in 2025. Whether you’re a DevOps team aiming to maintain a robust backend, an enterprise looking for automation to speed up deployment, or a startup seeking a wide set of features to fit your industry needs, these portals offer the tools to keep your API ecosystem running smoothly and efficiently.

Backstage

Backstage excels at offering a unified internal developer experience. It seamlessly incorporates a detailed Service Catalog, a variety of tooling options, and comprehensive documentation all within one portal. A standout feature is its plugin architecture that allows teams to tailor the portal to their specific needs. Backstage also supports easy integration with popular platforms like GitHub and GitLab.

Advantages:

• Open-source and can be extended through a plugin architecture.

• Strong Service Catalog for centralizing internal software components.

• Good integration with GitHub, GitLab, and popular CI/CD pipelines.

• Flexible foundation for platform engineering teams to build upon.

Limitations:

• Steep setup & maintenance: It’s open source, but enterprises shoulder the burden of configuring, hosting, and upgrading. Many teams underestimate the internal DevOps/infra cost.¹

• Fragile plugin sprawl: Different plugins break with upgrades, and enterprises often end up maintaining their own forks.²

• Weak API catalog: Service Catalog ≠ API Catalog. It catalogs software components, not APIs across gateways. Metadata depth is limited compared to true API platforms.³

• Manual Data Ingestion: It uses static YAML files to fill its catalog, which is hard to maintain and unmanageable at enterprise scale.⁴

• Limited customization capabilities: Even small UI changes require React/engineering resources. There’s no low-code/visual editor.⁵

Azure API Management

Azure API Management (APIM) is Microsoft’s full-featured API management platform that includes a customizable developer portal. It enables teams to publish, secure, and monitor APIs while offering developers self-service access to documentation, code samples, and test consoles. With built-in analytics, role-based access, and integration across the Azure ecosystem, APIM is a strong choice for organizations already leveraging Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

Advantages:

• Full-featured API management tightly integrated with the Azure ecosystem.

• Built-in analytics and monitoring of API traffic.

• Role-based access control supported natively.

• Includes a customizable developer portal out-of-the-box.

• Strong security and compliance support via Azure AD.

Limitations:

• No support for custom HTML or widgets in v2 tiers: The v2 tiers do not support custom widgets or the injection of custom HTML code.¹

• Tight Azure lock-in: Works only if you are all-in on Azure.

• Cannot restrict individual API operations per user role: You can assign access at the product level, but not control visibility of individual operations based on user roles.²

• Managed portal limits on pages, media, and widgets: In v2 tiers, the developer portal enforces strict quotas: e.g. maximum 15 media files, only 30–50 pages, and limited number of built-in widgets. No custom widget support either.³

• Innovation bottleneck: Deep developer‑experience enhancements (like novel interactions, AI‑agent workflows, or custom logic) often require self-hosting, with the future roadmap of the managed portal left to Microsoft’s timetable.⁴

• Limited page-building or CMS features: Branding and customization are challenging because custom CSS injection is disallowed.⁵

AWS API Gateway

AWS API Gateway is a managed service that makes it simple to create, publish, and secure APIs at any scale. While it’s primarily an API gateway, it includes options to expose your APIs through a developer-facing portal. Integration with AWS services like Lambda and CloudWatch ensures scalability, monitoring, and streamlined API lifecycle management.

Advantages:

• Highly scalable and tightly integrated with AWS services (Lambda, CloudWatch, IAM).

• Managed service simplifies API creation, publishing, and securing.

• Pay-as-you-go pricing model.

• Reliable for high-traffic workloads within AWS environments.

Limitations:

• No vendor-managed developer portal: AWS API Gateway does not ship with a vendor-managed Developer Portal. If you want one, you need to either build it yourself, use open-source/serverless options, or stack another vendor’s solution on top.¹

• Extra work for small teams: If you only have a few APIs or a narrow set of consumers, spinning up and maintaining a portal can be overkill. Teams often resort to spreadsheets, Confluence, or GitHub repos to track APIs. While this works temporarily, it’s not scalable as the number of APIs or consumers grows.²

• Complexity in scaling: Once you start managing dozens or hundreds of APIs, manual documentation updates quickly become unwieldy and unsustainable without a proper portal integrated with AWS API Gateway.³

• API keys provide no real security: AWS API Gateway’s API keys are designed for usage tracking and throttling, not authentication or authorization. If you rely on them for security, you’re left with no identity verification, no roles, and no way to revoke compromised keys.⁴

• Usage plans lack fine-grained control: Usage plans are applied at a broad level. If multiple APIs are grouped under the same plan, a user with a valid key for one API automatically gains access to all APIs in that plan. This lack of granularity creates a governance gap, making it difficult to enforce separation of concerns or limit access per API.⁵

Readme

ReadMe specializes in delivering user-friendly, interactive API documentation. It offers features like dynamic code examples, API key generation, and integrated changelogs to keep developers engaged and informed. Its analytics capabilities also help API providers understand developer behavior and improve the overall API experience.

Advantages:

• Excellent interactive API documentation with live code examples.

• API key generation and changelog features enhance DX.

• Easy to set up and maintain compared to heavier platforms.

• Attractive UI and modern documentation styling.

• Analytics provide a baseline view of developer behavior.

Limitations:

• Docs-first, not catalog-first: Excellent interactive docs, but it doesn’t unify APIs across gateways or serve as a central source of truth.¹

• Cloud hosted only: No self-hosted or open-source options.²

• Complex UI for beginners: ReadMe’s interface, while feature-rich, can feel overwhelming for newcomers who are just starting to build or manage API documentation.³

• Limited styling & customization: While it supports themes and branding, it doesn’t allow the deep customization of layout, components, and rendering.⁴

• Syncing multiple API specs requires manual handling: Scaling across multiple APIs often means extra work: setting up CI/CD pipelines and manually managing Swagger specs or naming conventions adds complexity fast.⁵

Apiboost

Apiboost is the advanced, business-focused API portal that goes far beyond the limitations of open-source, gateway-tied, or doc-only solutions. Unlike the above-mentioned DevPortals, Apiboost is SaaS-managed, so you don’t carry the burden of setup and maintenance. Unlike traditional portal solutions, Apiboost is not locked to one cloud or gateway and is ready for the upcoming AI agent revolution.

Supporting the full API lifecycle, from publishing and access control to productization and adoption, Apiboost serves a broader audience than most developer portals, in particular it serves product managers, API owners, business development teams, external partners, and marketing specialists. With enterprise-grade access controls, a built-in CMS for both technical and business content, and collaboration features like Team Builder, Apiboost provides a user-friendly portal for API programs.

Advantages:

• Business-focused portal: Designed for API productization, adoption and indirect monetization, not just documentation.

• Broad audience reach: Serves developers, API owners, partners, and marketing teams in one portal.

• Enterprise-grade access control: Granular access controls with multi-level permissions and SSO support.

• Powerful content management: Includes a powerful CMS for content and tutorials, plus automated docs from OpenAPI specs.

• Collaboration built-in: Team Builder enables internal and external teams to collaborate with delegated administration.

• Fast time-to-market: SaaS-managed or on-premise with ready-made customization options that reduce the need to build from scratch.

• Future-ready: AI-agent readiness ensures APIs are consumable by both humans and automated systems.

Limitations:

• Commercial model: Requires a subscription. There are three levels ranging from small catalog to an enterprise level with unlimited APIs.

• Requires an admin: To unlock its full potential, you’ll need at least one team member trained on the platform. The learning curve isn’t steep compared to building a portal from scratch, but it does require onboarding and familiarity with the product’s features and governance model.

• API monetization is limited: Apiboost does support API monetization, but the capability is a custom add-on and is only offered at the enterprise level.

Apiboost: How Does It Differ From Traditional DevPortals?

In the era where developers use AI assistants more and more, a solid foundation of discoverable, well-documented APIs is essential. Apiboost provides this foundation.

By combining strong governance, content management, and adoption analytics with a ready-made, customizable SaaS or on-premise platform, Apiboost helps enterprises launch in hours, reduce engineering overhead, and scale API initiatives.

Visual Page Builder for User-Friendly Content Management

Intuitive and easy-to-use Developer Experience is created with the help of Visual Page Builder. Being powered by a robust Content Management System, Apiboost allows building and managing professional API demonstration simple and fast. Thanks to this functionality, cross-functional teams can use dynamic templates to easily assemble pages with reusable components to keep API-related resources clear and organized. Apiboost helps to streamline API DevPortal content management and keep brand consistency across docs.

Internationalization Feature for Global Reach

Apiboost helps to reach all your developers no matter their location and language they speak. Within a few simple clicks, administrators can enable support for new languages. This creates a solid foundation for global collaboration between devs, partners, product owners, and other stakeholders. Once new languages are enabled, your content management team gains full control over translation and presentation of the page in each language. Integration with external translation workflows is also possible with Apiboost DevPortal.

Granular Access Control

Apiboost offers robust access control tools out-of-the-box, helping to manage API access effectively and securely. Admins can bundle private APIs into logical groups and after that grant access to specific user roles, specific developers, or teams.

Interactive API Catalog

API catalog is a core function of any Developer Portal, as it assists developers in discovering APIs they need. Apiboost goes even further than traditional catalog listing and offers powerful search and filtering capabilities combined with granular access control within the catalog. As a result, users can only find information they are supposed to see based on their specific roles and permissions.

To make developers understand APIs even faster, Apiboost Developer Portal facilitates onboarding by offering easy-to-understand API overview with an instant access to complete specifications for deep technical dive, all within a single intuitive interface.

Support Channels and Resources

In most use cases, developers need far more than raw technical API documentation. This is where Apiboost’s Resource Center comes into play. Here, developers can access diverse support channels, including but not limited to guides, videos, tutorials, and release notes. Robust search and filtering capabilities allow users to search for the necessary information quickly. The same access control functionality ensures each role can only see and engage with information they are supposed to.

Approval Workflow for Developers

Developers can easily request access to the desired API by adding it to their credentials. If the API requires approval, Apiboost automatically initiates the approval workflow. The API key details will then showcase a ‘Pending’ status. On the back-end, Apiboost makes sure the specified product owners can review and approve those API access requests.

API Adoption Analytics

Apiboost gives enterprises a clear view of how their APIs are used, adopted, and scaled. From tracking portfolio growth and user onboarding to spotlighting the most popular APIs, every dashboard widget turns raw usage data into practical insights, helping teams improve engagement, streamline approvals, and accelerate adoption.

Multi-Gateway Readiness

Apiboost’s multi-gateway readiness ensures a solid foundation for integration across diverse API gateways like Apigee and AWS API Gateway. It unifies APIs from multiple gateways into a single, searchable catalog, normalizing metadata and enforcing consistent policies without manual overhead. This capability allows enterprises to manage complex API ecosystems efficiently. By providing a centralized portal with advanced filtering, ownership mapping, and AI-ready metadata, Apiboost enables developers to discover and integrate APIs quickly while maintaining governance and security across all platforms.

Apiboost vs Other Developer Portals: Side-by-Side Comparison

Summing Up

Developer portals have become essential for streamlining the process of building and managing complex applications. Known for making deployment easier, they boost productivity by offering extensive resources, high-level integration, and tools that simplify every stage from design to launch.

Focus on API program growth with Apiboost. Our portal provides high-level tools and a single source for API management, adoption, and monetization. Start your free 30-day trial today and see how effortless API success can be.