Envoy Gateway vs KrakenD API Gateway

Envoy Gateway is a free, open-source application gateway for managing Envoy Proxy in standalone or Kubernetes-based deployments. It provisions and configures proxies through Kubernetes Gateway API resources, extending the API to expose Envoy features. Traffic management includes rate limiting, retries, circuit breaking, timeouts and failover. Security options include mTLS, JWT-based access control, OIDC integration and API-key authorization; listed authentication methods also include Basic Auth and external authorization. Envoy Gateway supports TLS termination and can attach an OCSP response from a Gateway certificate Secret during a TLS handshake. Metrics, access logging and distributed tracing are among its observability features. Installation options include Helm, Argo CD, Flux CD and Kubernetes YAML, though the quickstart requires a Kubernetes cluster. The project lists HTTP, HTTPS, gRPC, TLS, TCP and UDP support. Integrations and ecosystem projects include Envoy AI Gateway, Kuadrant, Knative, KServe and KEDA. Community help is directed through Envoy Slack, GitHub discussions and issues, and community meetings. Documentation cautions that the latest release includes recent main-branch commits and might not be stable.

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.