Higress vs Kusk Gateway
Higress
higress.ioKusk Gateway
kusk.ioSide by side
| Figure | Higress | Kusk Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 2 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Ingress Controllers | 8.6 (#4) | 8.5 (#5) |
| Deployment | A Docker all-in-one deployment exposes the console on port 8001, HTTP gateway on 8080 and HTTPS gateway on 8443. | Kusk says APIs can be published by adding an annotation to a service deployment, without additional configuration or DevOps support. |
| Documentation depth | Documentation covers quickstarts, Helm configuration, plugin usage, CRDs, service discovery, protocol conversion, operations and contributor workflows. | Documentation includes getting-started tutorials, CLI reference, dashboard reference, Kubernetes resources, guides and a detailed OpenAPI extension reference. |
| Licence | The main Higress project is licensed under Apache License 2.0, while bundled components can carry separate licences. | Kusk is presented as 100% open source under the MIT License. |
| What it does | Higress is an open-source, AI-native cloud API gateway built on Istio and Envoy. | Kusk is a Kubernetes API gateway powered by Envoy with native OpenAPI support for configuring cluster ingress. |
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
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.
Kusk Gateway
Kusk Gateway is a Kubernetes API gateway powered by Envoy, with native OpenAPI support. It uses OpenAPI definitions to configure a cluster's Ingress Controller, making it relevant to teams following an OpenAPI-first workflow for REST APIs. It can mock API responses for prototyping and automatically validate requests and responses. Teams can set request timeouts and CORS without coding, and adjust headers, CORS, limits, and quality of service globally or for individual paths.
An open-source dashboard supports API deployment and management, specification editing and validation, and API testing. The maker says an API can be published by adding an annotation to a service deployment, without additional configuration or DevOps support. Kusk can be installed on Mac, Linux, or Windows and is self-hosted. The project is 100% open source under the MIT License, with rate limiting and authentication policies listed. The maker presents it for teams building modern REST APIs on Kubernetes.