Last updated June 10th 2024

Top 7 Internal Developer Portal Solutions and Use Cases in 2025

An Internal Developer Portal (IDP) is a central resource for developers, providing APIs, tools, and documentation.

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What is Internal Developer Portal?

An internal developer portal (IDP), often referred to as an internal API portal or developer hub, acts as a central resource for developers within an organization. It provides a self-service environment for developers to discover and utilize internal APIs, tools, documentation, and resources for application and integration development. This portal centralizes knowledge and resources, encourages best practices, and nurtures a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Internal Developer Portal Use Cases

Platform Orchestration

Platform orchestration is indispensable for maintaining scalability, reliability, and efficiency within complex platform architectures. It automates deployment and management tasks, diminishes manual labor, and ensures consistent operations across the platform. As a vital use case in platform engineering, platform orchestration manages and coordinates the deployment, scaling, and lifecycle of services and applications on the platform.

Container Visualization

Container visualization tools in platform engineering provide a graphical depiction of the cluster (e.g., Kubernetes cluster) and its resources. These tools help platform engineering teams gain insights into the cluster's health, resource allocation, and application deployments, making it easier to understand and manage the complex interactions within container environments. By visualizing the container environment, platform engineers can make informed decisions and effectively operate and maintain their platforms.

Internal Developer Portal (IDP)

An internal developer portal (IDP), often referred to as an internal API portal or developer hub, acts as a central resource for developers within an organization. It provides a self-service environment for developers to discover and utilize internal APIs, tools, documentation, and resources for application and integration development. This portal centralizes knowledge and resources, encourages best practices, and nurtures a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Service Catalog

In platform engineering, a service catalog is essential for enhancing collaboration, promoting reuse, and streamlining the consumption of services and APIs. It offers a comprehensive overview of platform services, enabling software developers to discover, understand, and use these services efficiently.

Platform as a Product

The concept of "Platform as a Product" focuses on considering the platform itself as a product, delivering value to its developer users. It involves applying product management principles to the platform's development and management. Adopting this mindset enables platform engineering teams to create platforms that provide value, drive innovation, and cultivate a robust ecosystem. This approach ensures that the platform is developer-friendly and evolves with changing needs and technological advances.

Internal Developer Portal Requirements

Here is a comprehensive Internal Developer Portal requirements checklist you can use to further define your use case.

Must automate parts of the developer workflow

The platform should include automation for repetitive tasks such as build, test, deployment, and code reviews in the developer workflow.

Must be scalable and performant

The platform should support high scalability and performance, offering features like auto-scaling, load balancing, and efficient resource management.

Must have compliance with data security and privacy regulations

Adheres to industry standards for data security and privacy, safeguarding sensitive information.

Must have strong authentication and access control mechanisms

Essential security measures such as Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and API Authorization should be supported.

Must have tools to manage and collect feedback and bug reports

It should provide capabilities to capture, track, and manage user feedback and bug reports effectively.

Must have version control and API management

The platform should offer robust version control systems and API management features to maintain the code base and manage APIs effectively.

Must integrate with our CI/CD tools

Integrates with leading CI/CD tools.

Must integrate with our identity management tools

Integrates with leading IAM tools.

Must integrate with our infrastructure management tools

Integrates with leading infrastructure management tools.

Must provide a great developer experience

The tool should offer an intuitive interface, good documentation, and rich features to enhance productivity and ease of use for developers.

Must provide robust activity and performance logging and monitoring

The platform should offer comprehensive activity tracking and performance metrics, with detailed logging and monitoring capabilities.

Must provide robust and customizable reports

The tool should offer customizable and detailed reports, enabling insights into application performance, user activity, and error analysis.

Must provide seamless deployment

The platform should offer tools for easy and smooth deployment of applications, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management.

Must provide tools to orchestrate the workflow

The tool must provide robust service orchestration features to automate and manage the workflow of complex processes.

Internal Developer Portal Products

Here are some of the more popular Internal Developer Portal products.

  Port logo

An internal developer portal for building a service/software catalog and enabling self-service.

  Cortex logo

Cortex is an Internal Developer Portal (IDP) designed to streamline and enhance the efficiency of engineering teams.

  Humanitec logo

An enterprise-grade platform for building standardized configurations and workflows.

  Harness logo

Harness IDP streamlines software management, automates service onboarding, centralizes documentation, and integrates with plugins.

  Configure8 logo

An internal developer portal for accelerating velocity and achieving high standards.

  Backstage logo

An open source platform for unified, standardized management of backend services and tools.

  Cycloid logo

A sustainable engineering platform for empowering people and boosting software delivery.

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