A company is building an application on AWS. The application's backend includes an Amazon API Gateway REST API. The company's frontend application developers cannot continue work until the backend…

Configuring a MOCK integration directly on API Gateway methods requires no additional AWS resources, no code, and no backend infrastructure. The integration response mapping is defined within API Gateway itself, returning any desired HTTP status code and body. This is the lowest-overhead approach for unblocking frontend development while the backend is built in parallel.

Deploying a Lambda function to return mock responses achieves the same result as MOCK integration but adds operational overhead of managing, deploying, and paying for a Lambda function when the native MOCK type already handles this requirement.

Adding new API endpoints to return mocked responses does not address the existing endpoint contract and creates unnecessary resource sprawl; it does not represent a supported API Gateway integration pattern for mocking.

A proxy resource forwards the entire request to a backend HTTP or Lambda endpoint unchanged; it requires an actual backend to exist and does not provide mock response capability.