Best alternative to Apigee

For teams managing public-facing APIs, the primary choice often narrows to a full API gateway or a focused security scanner. middleBrick positions itself as the best alternative to Apigee when security validation is the main priority rather than traffic management or monetization. It is a self-service black-box scanner that submits requests to an endpoint and returns a risk grade from A to F with prioritized findings. Unlike gateway products, it does not require code changes, SDKs, or runtime agents, and it supports any language, framework, or cloud environment. Run times are typically under one minute using read-only methods (GET and HEAD) plus limited POST for LLM probes. For organizations that need to surface API risk quickly without managing infrastructure, this approach aligns with security controls described in OWASP API Top 10 (2023) and supports audit evidence for PCI-DSS 4.0 and SOC 2 Type II.

middleBrick performs black-box testing across 12 security categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023). It detects authentication bypasses, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none or expired tokens, IDOR through sequential and adjacent ID probing, privilege escalation via admin endpoint discovery, and over-exposed data fields. Input validation checks include CORS wildcard usage with credentials, dangerous HTTP methods, and debug endpoints. Rate limiting is assessed through header analysis and response size checks. Data exposure covers PII patterns, Luhn-validated card numbers, context-aware SSN detection, API key formats for AWS, Stripe, GitHub, and Slack, and error or stack trace leakage. Additional coverage includes SSRF indicators, missing API versioning, server fingerprinting, unsafe third-party webhook surfaces, and encryption misconfigurations like missing HSTS or mixed content.

The scanner includes dedicated LLM / AI Security testing with 18 adversarial probes across three scan tiers: Quick, Standard, and Deep. These probes target system prompt extraction, instruction override, DAN and roleplay jailbreaks, data exfiltration, cost exploitation, encoding bypasses, translation-embedded injection, few-shot poisoning, markdown injection, multi-turn manipulation, indirect prompt injection, token smuggling, tool abuse, nested instruction injection, and PII extraction. For API specifications, middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 with recursive $ref resolution. It cross-references spec definitions against runtime behavior to surface undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. This helps you prepare for security reviews that reference OWASP API Top 10 and common regulatory alignment practices without claiming certification.

Authenticated scanning is available in plans above Starter and supports Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies. Domain verification is enforced through a DNS TXT record or an HTTP well-known file to ensure only the domain owner can scan with credentials. The scanner forwards a strict allowlist of headers, including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers. Deployment options include a Web Dashboard for scan management and trend tracking, a CLI via the middlebrick npm package with JSON or text output, a GitHub Action that can fail builds based on score thresholds, an MCP Server for AI coding assistants, and a programmable API for custom integrations. Pro tier adds scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, diff detection across scans, email alerts rate-limited to one per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after five consecutive failures.

middleBrick operates with a strict read-only posture and never sends destructive payloads. Private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked at multiple layers. Customer scan data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation, and it is never sold or used for model training. Because it is a scanner, it does not fix, patch, block, or remediate findings; it provides detection and guidance. It does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing, does not detect business logic vulnerabilities that require domain context, and does not offer blind SSRF testing that relies on out-of-band infrastructure. It does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits, and it avoids any language that implies certification or guaranteed compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, NIST, CCPA, or other regulations.