Apache APISIX vs API7 Enterprise
Apache APISIX
apisix.apache.org
API7 Enterprise
api7.aiSide by side
| Figure | Apache APISIX | API7 Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Rest Apis | 7.6 (#12) | 8.1 (#6) |
| Spec score · API Gateway Software | 7.6 (#18) | 8.1 (#8) |
| Spec score · Apis | 7.6 (#17) | 8.1 (#11) |
| Integrations | The site lists integrations including Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, Redis, Keycloak, OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek, and Ollama. | The product page names Keycloak, OAuth, Okta, and 2FA authentication systems, plus Datadog, Prometheus, and Grafana for observability. |
| Security | Security plugins include CORS, JWT, Key Auth, OpenID Connect, and Keycloak; vulnerability reports are directed to the Apache Security Team at [email protected]. | The maker's documentation says API7.ai holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance credentials. |
| Support | The project FAQ directs users to its Slack channel, mailing list, GitHub Issues, and GitHub Discussions for help. | The Enterprise product page lists onboarding, migration guidance, architecture review, performance optimization, custom plugin development, and GitOps integration as professional support services. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache APISIX
Apache APISIX is a free, Apache 2.0-licensed, self-hosted gateway for routing, securing and managing API, microservice and LLM traffic. It runs on bare metal or Kubernetes and supports HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, UDP, WebSocket, gRPC, MQTT, HTTP/3 and Dubbo, with HTTP-to-gRPC transcoding. More than 100 open-source plugins cover traffic management, security, observability and protocol handling. The project provides authentication options including API keys, JWT, Basic Authentication, OAuth 2.0/OpenID Connect, HMAC, LDAP, CAS, Keycloak, Casdoor, forward authentication and multi-auth, along with rate limiting and request transformation. Its NGINX-and-etcd architecture uses hot-reloadable plugins and distributes cluster configuration without restarts. AI gateway functions include multi-provider proxying, load balancing, retries, fallback, token limits, prompt security and transformation. Listed integrations include Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, Redis, OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS Bedrock. Official source releases include detached signatures and SHA-512 checksums.
API7 Enterprise
API7 Enterprise has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.