I have a REST API hosted on Heroku that normally responds in about 250ms when called directly from my device. However, when accessing the same service via the RapidAPI gateway, the response times jump to between 1200ms and 1800ms. As I’m fairly new to RapidAPI, I’m puzzled by this increase. I expected a minor latency increase due to the intermediary, but an extra delay of over one second is surprising. Can anyone explain what might be causing this?
I have encountered a similar situation when deploying an API via RapidAPI. My initial analysis indicated that the delay often comes from additional processing and routing steps added by the gateway. In my case, authentication and logging checks on the gateway side brought extra overhead. The overall path length increased and added network hops, which increased latency. This isn’t usually a bug but an inherent design trade-off. It may help to reach out to RapidAPI support and explore optimization options for your specific use case.