Apache APISIX vs Redocly

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.

Redocly is an API documentation and governance suite for teams creating, maintaining, and monitoring API experiences. Redoc generates reference documentation from OpenAPI definitions, with automatic code samples, mock servers, and interactive testing through Replay. Reunite supports collaborative editing, visual reviews, remote content, and deployment previews with an audit trail; it connects to GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, or Redocly’s native Git solution. The open-source CLI validates, lints, and bundles OpenAPI definitions, while the VS Code extension helps write and maintain them and flags definition errors. Reef provides a searchable internal API catalog with metadata, scorecards, and discovery features. Respect monitors APIs against an OpenAPI specification and can send alerts through Slack or email. Redocly lists web, API, and extension platforms, custom domains, and content analytics. It says data is encrypted in transit and at rest and reports a completed SOC 2 Type II audit. Pro costs $10.00 per seat/month, billed monthly, and includes one project and 100 pages. API docs can be launched for free, and the full suite has a 30-day trial.