Apache APISIX vs KrakenD API Gateway
Apache APISIX
apisix.apache.org
KrakenD API Gateway
krakend.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache APISIX | KrakenD API Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Rest Apis | 7.6 (#12) | 7.7 (#11) |
| Spec score · Api 1 | 7.6 (#14) | 7.8 (#13) |
| Spec score · API Gateway Software | 7.6 (#18) | 7.8 (#13) |
| Spec score · Apis | 7.6 (#17) | 7.7 (#16) |
| Founded | 2019 | 2016 |
| Purpose | Apache APISIX is an open-source API gateway for routing, securing, and managing traffic to APIs, microservices, and LLM workloads. | KrakenD is a stateless, distributed API gateway for connecting, securing, aggregating, and transforming APIs and AI workloads. |
| Security | Security plugins include CORS, JWT, Key Auth, OpenID Connect, and Keycloak; vulnerability reports are directed to the Apache Security Team at [email protected]. | KrakenD describes a zero-trust design with token validation, API key authentication, IP filtering, rate limiting, and protections against common web attack vectors. |
| Support | The project FAQ directs users to its Slack channel, mailing list, GitHub Issues, and GitHub Discussions for help. | Community support resources include Google Groups, GitHub issue reporting, and Gophers Slack; Enterprise offers direct vendor support and SLAs. |
Plans
KrakenD API Gateway
- Community EditionFree
- Enterprise EditionPriced on request
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.
KrakenD API Gateway
KrakenD API Gateway is a stateless, distributed gateway for connecting, securing, aggregating, and transforming APIs and AI workloads. It can combine data from multiple services into one response shaped for client needs. Traffic controls include rate limiting, circuit breaking, IP filtering, bot detection, and load balancing. Connectivity includes REST, RabbitMQ, SNS, SQS, Kafka, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, and Lambda; listed protocols also include HTTP, WebSockets, AMQP, and NATS. Authentication options include JWT, OAuth2, OpenID Connect, client credentials, API keys, Basic Authentication, and mTLS. KrakenD is self-hosted, with deployment choices including Docker, Kubernetes, cloud marketplace virtual machines, and Linux packages or binaries. The maker says the development Docker image can be used on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and KrakenD runs natively on Linux and Mac OS. Community Edition costs nothing and includes unlimited requests, APIs, and AI workloads. AI Gateway and AI security are Enterprise features.