Techniques are provided for tracking application programming interface (API) requests in a cloud computing environment. For example, a method for tracking API requests is implemented by an API gateway. The API gateway receives an API request which comprises a given API endpoint to access a target service of a computing system. The API gateway determines if the received API request is valid. In response to determining that the received API request is valid, the API gateway accesses at least one API counter associated with the given API endpoint of the received API request, wherein the at least one API counter is configured to count a number of times that the given API endpoint is accessed. The API gateway increments a count of the at least one API counter by one, and the API gateway routes the API request to the target service for execution.