Open-source alternatives to Gateway

The Cloud-Native API Gateway and AI Gateway

Higress is an AI API gateway and cloud-native traffic manager that functions as a Kubernetes ingress controller. It provides a centralized system for routing, securing, and optimizing traffic directed toward large language models, AI agents, and microservice architectures. The project distinguishes itself through deep AI orchestration, including the ability to host and manage Model Context Protocol servers that transform REST APIs into tools for AI agents. It features specialized AI infrastructure for model request proxying, protocol translation across multiple providers, and semantic-based c

Easegress is a cloud native API gateway, Kubernetes ingress controller, and service mesh control plane. It serves as a centralized entry point for managing network traffic, providing a dedicated control plane and sidecar data plane to handle the lifecycle and interception of requests between distributed services. The project functions as an AI model gateway that proxies requests to large language model providers and translates request formats for compatibility. It is an extensible proxy that allows for custom request and response handling through a filter pipeline implemented via WebAssembly

Traefik is a cloud-native edge router and API gateway designed to manage service communication and traffic flow across distributed infrastructure. It functions as a dynamic service proxy that automatically discovers backend services and configures routing rules in real time, eliminating the need for manual restarts or complex configuration updates. By integrating directly with container orchestrators and service registries, it maintains a consistent state for network traffic, load balancing, and security policy enforcement. The project distinguishes itself through its deep integration with di

Tyk is an open-source API gateway written in Go that routes, secures, and monitors network traffic across REST, GraphQL, TCP, and gRPC protocols. It functions as a multi-protocol proxy designed to deliver requests to backend services while managing the end-to-end API lifecycle. The system distinguishes itself through a plugin-based architecture that allows for the injection of custom logic into the request and response middleware chain. It also features native Kubernetes integration, operating as an ingress controller that uses operators and custom resource definitions to deploy security poli

SpringBoot-Labs is a collection of educational resources and reference implementations for Java backend architecture and distributed systems. It provides practical lab guides and code samples focused on building applications with the Spring Boot framework and designing scalable microservices architectures. The project specifically covers service governance and distributed cloud deployment patterns using Spring Cloud and Spring Cloud Alibaba. It includes a dedicated kit for microservices and a guide for executing remote procedure calls and managing service discovery via the Dubbo protocol. Th

Express Gateway is a centralized API gateway built on the Express.js framework, designed to serve as a single entry point for microservices architectures. It manages incoming network traffic by routing requests to backend services based on defined path-based rules while enforcing security policies and authentication protocols at the edge. The system distinguishes itself through a configuration-driven approach that utilizes a centralized definition file to dictate routing logic and policy application. It features a hot-reloading engine that allows for real-time updates to routing rules and sec

HTTP API Gateway

This project is a Kubernetes ingress controller that manages external traffic by dynamically configuring the HAProxy load balancer. It functions as a bridge between cluster resources and the network data plane, translating high-level ingress definitions into active proxy configurations to route HTTP, TCP, and UDP traffic into containerized environments. The controller distinguishes itself through a decoupled architecture that separates control plane logic from the proxy process, allowing for independent lifecycle management and versioning. It utilizes template-based configuration generation a

Lura is an API gateway and traffic router that directs network requests to backend services using a configurable pipeline of processing steps. It functions as a backend load balancer and a request middleware engine designed to validate, modify, and transform incoming requests and responses. The system specializes in API response aggregation, allowing it to execute concurrent requests to multiple backend services and merge the results into a single unified output. This includes the ability to perform dynamic response mapping by renaming fields and filtering data to optimize the final client pa

Meshery is a service mesh management plane and cloud native infrastructure orchestrator. It provides a visual design-as-code environment for modeling microservices and infrastructure components through declarative blueprints, functioning as a centralized platform for designing, deploying, and managing service mesh infrastructure. The platform is distinguished by its ability to translate visual designs into active deployments and its use of gRPC-based adapters to integrate with diverse infrastructure providers. It features a multi-tenant architecture that manages shared workspaces and role-bas

OpenResty/Nginx Gateway for API Monitoring and Management.

Spring Cloud Gateway is an API gateway and routing service built on Spring Boot. It acts as a central entry point for microservices, directing incoming HTTP traffic to downstream services using a combination of predicates and filters. The project is a non-blocking request router that leverages Netty and Project Reactor to handle high-concurrency traffic via asynchronous data streams. It functions as a dynamic request router and network traffic filter, allowing for the automated detection of and routing to available service instances in dynamic network environments. The gateway manages micros

Higress is an AI-native and cloud-native API gateway that routes, secures, and optimizes traffic between clients and large language model services. It functions as a centralized entry point for microservices, serving as both a Kubernetes ingress controller and an AI gateway orchestrator. The project distinguishes itself by managing traffic across multiple AI providers using a unified protocol, incorporating token-aware rate limiting and response caching to optimize model inference. It coordinates communication between AI models and external tools to provide real-time context and data, while a

Shenyu is a microservices API gateway designed to route external traffic to backend services using dynamic rules and protocol conversion. It functions as a central entry point that manages traffic flow through a combination of an API traffic governor, a distributed configuration manager, and a security layer for protecting endpoints. The project features a dynamic plugin architecture that allows for the injection of custom request processing logic without restarting the server. It utilizes a distributed coordination service to synchronize routing and policy updates across a gateway cluster in

LiteLLM is a unified gateway and proxy server designed to centralize access to over one hundred language model providers. It provides a standardized API interface that abstracts vendor-specific schemas, allowing developers to interact with diverse models through a single, consistent format. By acting as a central traffic management layer, it enables organizations to route, secure, and govern model interactions across multiple deployments. The platform distinguishes itself through its policy-driven architecture, which uses configuration-based routing to manage traffic distribution, load balanc

BFE is a Layer 7 HTTP and HTTPS traffic distributor that routes requests based on content inspection and configurable policies, managed through a RESTful API. It operates as a reverse proxy, distributing incoming traffic across backend servers according to user-defined rules. The project distinguishes itself through a domain-specific language for content-aware routing, allowing traffic to be directed by inspecting request headers, paths, and payloads. It supports multiple configurable load balancing policies and includes a plugin-based extension system for adding custom modules and middleware

🔒 Enterprise-grade API gateway that helps you monitor and impose cost or rate limits per API key. Get fine-grained access control and monitoring per user, application, or environment. Supports OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, vLLM, and open-source LLMs.

KrakenD is an extensible, ultra-high performance API Gateway that helps you effortlessly adopt microservices and secure communications. KrakenD is easy to operate and run and scales out without a single point of failure.

Emissary is a Kubernetes API gateway that manages incoming external traffic and routes it to internal microservices. It utilizes an Envoy proxy as the underlying data plane to handle high-performance traffic routing and protocol translation, with a control plane that translates Kubernetes custom resources and annotations into proxy configurations. The project provides specialized support for gRPC infrastructure, including HTTP/2 routing and gRPC-Web protocol bridging for browser-based clients. It enables zero-trust security through mutual TLS encryption and delegates identity verification to

Apinto是一款高性能、可扩展、易维护的云原生API网关。