Apache APISIX is an open source API gateway you can self-host — an Apigee and Kong alternative built on NGINX and etcd that routes, secures, and load-balances traffic for your APIs, microservices, and LLM calls, with 100+ hot-loadable plugins and no restarts.

What is Apache APISIX?

Apache APISIX is an open source API gateway that sits in front of your APIs and microservices, handling routing, authentication, load balancing, rate limiting, and observability from one place. Built on NGINX and etcd and governed by the Apache Software Foundation, it distributes configuration to every node in real time, so routes and plugins update without restarts or downtime.

What is Apache APISIX best for?

APISIX fits teams running many APIs or microservices — often on Kubernetes — who want a fast, fully open gateway they control rather than a managed SaaS. It suits north-south (client-to-service) and east-west (service-to-service) traffic, doubles as a Kubernetes ingress controller, and increasingly acts as an AI gateway in front of LLM providers.

What can Apache APISIX do?

Dynamic routing by path, host, header, method, and custom expressions, with weighted load balancing and traffic splitting for canary releases.
100+ plugins, hot-loaded at runtime with no restart — authentication (JWT, key-auth, OAuth/OIDC, Keycloak, Casbin), rate limiting, circuit breaking, and request transformation.
Multi-protocol proxying: HTTP/2, HTTP/3, gRPC, WebSocket, MQTT, and Dubbo.
AI gateway for LLM traffic — proxy and load-balance across 20+ providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek, Ollama), token-based rate limiting, prompt security, automatic failover, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool governance.
Observability integrations with Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, SkyWalking, Zipkin, and Datadog.
Custom plugins in Lua, plus Java, Go, Python, Node.js, and WebAssembly via the plugin runner.
Flexible deployment on bare metal, Docker, Kubernetes, and ARM64.

Where does Apache APISIX fall short?

Extending the core means learning Lua/LuaJIT. APISIX runs on OpenResty, so the deepest plugin work is in Lua; the multi-language plugin runner (Java, Go, Python) adds a sidecar process and some latency compared to native Lua plugins.
etcd is a hard dependency. The control plane stores all configuration in an etcd cluster, which you must run, secure, and operate — an extra moving part that gateways backed by a plain database don’t require.
Fewer turnkey managed options than Kong. There is no first-party APISIX SaaS; managed hosting and commercial support come from API7.ai (the company behind the project), so the fully managed ecosystem is smaller than Kong Konnect’s.

Is Apache APISIX free?

Yes — Apache APISIX is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, with no paid tiers or gated features. The full gateway, dashboard, and AI gateway are open source, so there is nothing to unlock. Optional paid enterprise support and a managed platform are available separately from API7.ai, but the project itself is complete and free to self-host.

What does Apache APISIX replace?

APISIX is a self-hosted stand-in for managed API management platforms: Apigee, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management, and MuleSoft. Instead of per-request or tiered cloud billing and vendor lock-in, you run the gateway on your own infrastructure and keep full control of traffic and data. It also competes directly with Kong as an open source gateway.

FAQ

Is Apache APISIX open source? Yes. It is licensed under Apache 2.0 and is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project, so it is vendor-neutral and no single company can move the core behind a paywall.

Can I self-host Apache APISIX for free? Yes — the entire gateway, including the dashboard and AI gateway plugins, is free to self-host with no feature gating. You only pay if you choose commercial support or managed hosting from API7.ai.

Is Apache APISIX a good Apigee or Kong alternative? For teams that want performance and full open source control, yes. It reports roughly 18,000 QPS per core with sub-0.2ms added latency, and unlike Kong Enterprise it keeps features like OIDC and advanced rate limiting in the open source core rather than behind a paid license.

What do I need to run Apache APISIX? APISIX needs an etcd cluster for configuration storage and runs on NGINX/OpenResty. The quickest start is Docker; production deployments commonly run on Kubernetes or bare metal, including ARM64.