Open-source alternatives to Skipper

Documentation for Apigee-127

BunkerWeb is a containerized suite of infrastructure tools that functions as a cloud-native web application firewall and Nginx reverse proxy. It provides a security layer for web applications, combining traffic routing with automated SSL certificate management and a web-based security dashboard for monitoring and configuration. The project distinguishes itself through its deep integration with container orchestrators, serving as a Kubernetes ingress controller that automates security settings and service discovery via container labels. It features a plugin-based extension model and a manageme

Caddy is an extensible, modular web server platform designed for high-performance traffic management and automated security. At its core, it functions as a dynamic HTTP gateway that handles request routing, static asset delivery, and reverse proxying through a chain of configurable handler modules. The system is built on a modular architecture that allows developers to extend server functionality by registering custom components, all managed through a unified lifecycle and provisioning framework. What distinguishes Caddy is its focus on automated infrastructure and zero-downtime operations. I

Cilium is a networking, security, and observability platform for containerized environments that leverages kernel-level data paths to process traffic. By executing programs directly within the Linux kernel, it provides high-performance packet filtering, routing, and load balancing without the need for traditional user-space proxies or context switching. The platform distinguishes itself through identity-based security enforcement, which filters traffic based on service labels rather than volatile IP addresses. It integrates containerized workloads with external physical or virtual infrastruct

Pingora is a Rust-based framework for building high-performance network services, including HTTP reverse proxies, layer seven load balancers, and TLS termination proxies. It serves as an asynchronous network library designed to intercept and route HTTP, gRPC, and WebSocket traffic between clients and upstream backend servers. The project enables zero-downtime service updates by handing over listening sockets between processes during binary or configuration upgrades. It utilizes a programmable multi-phase pipeline to modify request and response bodies and headers, and it provides a pluggable T

Neutrino is a software load balancer(SLB)

Envoy is a high-performance, cloud-native service proxy designed for service-to-service communication in distributed architectures. It functions as a service mesh data plane, providing a centralized mechanism for managing, securing, and observing network traffic between microservices. The project is distinguished by its ability to perform dynamic traffic management and configuration updates in real-time without requiring service restarts or downtime. It utilizes a non-blocking, event-driven architecture to handle high-concurrency connections and supports hot-restart process management, which

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

Fabio is a network gateway that provides reverse proxying, layer 7 traffic management, and automated service discovery mapping. It functions as an HTTP reverse proxy, a gRPC and TCP proxy, and a service discovery gateway to route incoming traffic to healthy backend instances. The project distinguishes itself through deep integration with service registries, specifically acting as a Consul load balancer to automatically synchronize routing tables and update destination targets. It manages diverse traffic types using SNI-based routing for raw TCP streams and maintains full protocol compatibilit

Katran is an eBPF-based Layer 4 load balancer designed for high-performance network packet forwarding directly within the Linux kernel. It utilizes an XDP network packet processor to bypass the standard kernel network stack, minimizing latency and maximizing throughput for incoming traffic. The system implements weighted consistent hashing to distribute network loads and maintain session persistence across backend servers. It further optimizes the return path through a direct server return gateway, which allows backends to respond directly to clients and removes the load balancer from the out

Get public TCP LoadBalancers for local Kubernetes clusters

Kong is a high-performance API gateway and service connectivity platform designed to manage, secure, and monitor traffic across distributed microservices and hybrid cloud environments. It functions as a centralized control plane for service governance, providing essential traffic routing, load balancing, and request transformation capabilities to ensure consistent policy enforcement across all service endpoints. The platform distinguishes itself through a modular plugin architecture and a declarative configuration engine that allows infrastructure behavior to be defined via version-controlled

This project is an API gateway and ingress controller designed to manage traffic, security, and service connectivity within Kubernetes environments. It operates as a controller that monitors cluster state to reconcile gateway configurations with desired infrastructure definitions, ensuring that network policies and routing rules remain consistent across distributed deployments. The system distinguishes itself through a modular request pipeline that allows for the injection of custom logic to handle transformations, security checks, and logging. It supports declarative infrastructure managemen

:cloud: Modern & minimalistic load balancer for the Сloud era

This project is a Kubernetes ingress controller that functions as an API gateway and traffic manager for containerized environments. It operates by monitoring cluster events and translating native ingress resource definitions into active routing configurations, ensuring that external traffic is directed to internal services according to declarative specifications. The controller distinguishes itself through its ability to act as a specialized gateway for artificial intelligence models, providing a secure entry point that enforces rate limits, content moderation, and prompt guardrails. It supp

Apache Traffic Server™ is a fast, scalable and extensible HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 compliant caching proxy server.

3scale API Gateway

eBPF based cloud-native load-balancer for Kubernetes|Edge|Telco|IoT|XaaS.

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

Envoy is a cloud-native service proxy and distributed system traffic manager designed to route and control network traffic between services and clients. It operates as an L4 and L7 network proxy, managing communication at the edge and middle levels of a distributed cloud environment. The project provides capabilities for API gateway implementation and edge proxy routing to direct external requests to internal services. It serves as a foundation for service mesh traffic management and cloud-native load balancing to ensure high availability across backend instances. The system also includes to

MetalLB is a Kubernetes load balancer implementation and IP address manager designed for bare metal clusters. It functions as a networking tool that provides external connectivity and traffic distribution by assigning external IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to services. The project differentiates itself by providing two distinct advertisement modes. It can operate as a BGP routing controller, using the Border Gateway Protocol to announce service IPs to external routers with support for bidirectional forwarding detection and VRF-aware routing. Alternatively, it can act as a Layer 2 network advertiser

This project is an HTTP reverse proxy toolkit and programmable proxy engine designed for building high-performance network gateways. It functions as an HTTP request pipeline framework that allows for the interception and modification of network requests and responses. The system provides an extensible core for developing specialized proxy applications, offering programmatic control over routing and traffic behavior. It enables the creation of custom reverse proxies through a flexible pipeline used to handle specialized request and response logic. The toolkit covers network traffic management