A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector vs NGINX Gateway Fabric
A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector
documentation.a10networks.com
NGINX Gateway Fabric
docs.nginx.comSide by side
| Figure | A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector | NGINX Gateway Fabric |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Ingress Controllers | 7.7 (#11) | 7.4 (#16) |
| Integrations | A10 says the solution supports automation tools such as Terraform and Ansible for integration into CI/CD pipelines. | The documentation describes monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana and tracing with OpenTelemetry collectors, including Jaeger examples. |
| Purpose | Thunder Kubernetes Connector (TKC) helps provide external access to applications running in a Kubernetes cluster with Thunder ADC. | NGINX Gateway Fabric implements the Kubernetes Gateway API using NGINX as the data plane for load balancing, reverse proxying, and API gateway use cases. |
| Support | A10 provides product technical support and says its Technical Assistance Center uses a follow-the-sun support model to address issues at any time of day. | The support page directs users to GitHub issues and the NGINX Community Forum, and says users can contact F5 Sales for dedicated support or NGINX Plus features. |
Plans
NGINX Gateway Fabric
- NGINX Gateway Fabric (NGINX Open Source data plane)Free
In their own words
A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector
A10 Thunder Kubernetes Connector (TKC) monitors Kubernetes application lifecycles and updates an external Thunder ADC load balancer to route traffic. Running inside a Kubernetes cluster, it identifies a web service’s NodePort and dynamically configures Thunder ADC to load-balance traffic to Kubernetes nodes, avoiding manual network-resource provisioning. A10 describes TKC for multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud deployments, where Thunder ADC can apply consistent security and business policies across public and private clouds. Centralized traffic routing provides operations teams with application traffic and analytics visibility for troubleshooting. TKC supports Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD integration and is listed as an automated Kubernetes service-discovery option. Related Thunder ADC capabilities include Layer 4–7 load balancing, customizable health checks, aFleX scripting, TLS/SSL offloading, rate limiting and a web application firewall. TKC v2.4.2 is documented for Linux, self-hosted deployments using the ingress API model.
NGINX Gateway Fabric
NGINX Gateway Fabric is a self-hosted Kubernetes implementation of the Gateway API, using NGINX as its data plane for load balancing, reverse proxying, and API gateway use cases. Its control plane translates Gateway API resources into NGINX configuration. Supported resource coverage includes GatewayClass, Gateway, HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, ReferenceGrant, TLSRoute, TCPRoute, UDPRoute, and BackendTLSPolicy, though the support level varies by resource. Traffic features include HTTP and TLS routing, redirects, rewrites, request mirroring, session persistence, and rate limiting. Security documentation covers HTTPS with cert-manager, mutual TLS, basic authentication, OpenID Connect, external authentication, and JWT authentication. Monitoring examples use Prometheus and Grafana; tracing uses OpenTelemetry collectors, including Jaeger examples. The free NGINX Open Source data-plane plan costs nothing. Installation is available through Helm from an OCI registry or from source, with Gateway API resources installed beforehand. Version 2.7.2 requires Kubernetes 1.32 or later; documented images are available for amd64 and arm64. Support is directed to GitHub issues and the NGINX Community Forum.