Higress vs KrakenD API Gateway
Higress
higress.io
KrakenD API Gateway
krakend.ioSide by side
| Figure | Higress | KrakenD API Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 2 |
| Spec score · API Gateway Software | 8.7 (#2) | 7.8 (#13) |
| Deployment | A Docker all-in-one deployment exposes the console on port 8001, HTTP gateway on 8080 and HTTPS gateway on 8443. | KrakenD is self-hosted and available through Docker and Kubernetes, cloud marketplace virtual machines, Linux packages, and Linux generic binaries. |
| Security | Listed protections include prompt-attack detection, sensitive-content identification, data privacy protection, and output-content filtering. | 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 community edition includes community support and documentation; the dedicated commercial edition lists ticket, DingTalk group, and offline support. | Community support resources include Google Groups, GitHub issue reporting, and Gophers Slack; Enterprise offers direct vendor support and SLAs. |
| Traffic management | Its AI gateway supports Token-based quotas and rate limiting, API key pool rotation, and consumer authentication. | Traffic controls include rate limiting, circuit breaking, IP filtering, bot detection, and load balancing. |
Plans
Higress
- Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway Serverless StandardPriced on request
- Higress CommunityFree
- Higress Community EditionFree
- Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway Serverless EnterprisePriced on request
- Feitian Exclusive EditionPriced on request
KrakenD API Gateway
- Community EditionFree
- Enterprise EditionPriced on request
In their own words
Higress
Higress is an open-source API gateway for governing AI services and cloud-native traffic, built on Istio and Envoy. Its AI Gateway provides centralized access to model APIs and MCP servers, with unified routing, protocol conversion, load balancing, and fallback. Higress says it supports more than 100 mainstream large language models. It can convert HTTP to MCP and proxy native MCP services. Traffic controls include token-based quotas and rate limits, API key pool rotation, and consumer authentication. Caching can reuse inference results precisely or semantically to reduce token use and latency for similar or repeated questions. Listed security measures cover prompt attacks, sensitive content, data privacy, and output filtering. The wider API gateway combines traffic, microservice, and security gateway functions with service exposure and API lifecycle management. It supports HTTP, HTTP2, HTTPS, GRPC, GRPCS, TCP, and Dubbo, along with Kubernetes Ingress and Gateway API. Custom Wasm plugins can be written in Go, Rust, or JavaScript, with sandbox isolation and hot updates. The self-hosted Community Edition is free; the site also lists a managed Alibaba Cloud plan billed by actual usage, starting at ¥0.
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.