Apache APISIX
Apache APISIX is an open-source gateway for routing, securing, and managing traffic to APIs, microservices, and LLM workloads.
What Apache APISIX is
Apache APISIX is an open-source gateway for routing, securing, and managing traffic to APIs, microservices, and LLM workloads. Licensed under Apache 2.0, it is designed for teams to self-manage, with commercial support available separately if required. It can run on bare metal or Kubernetes and supports HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, UDP, WebSocket, gRPC, MQTT, HTTP/3, and Dubbo.
APISIX offers more than 100 open-source plugins for traffic management, security, observability, and protocol handling. Its hot-reloadable plugin pipeline and etcd distribute configuration across a cluster in real time without restarts. Security options include CORS, JWT, Key Auth, OpenID Connect, and Keycloak, alongside rate limiting and request transformation. AI gateway capabilities include multi-provider proxying, load balancing, retries and fallback, token rate limits, prompt security, and prompt transformation. The homepage reports approximately 18,000 queries per second per core and 0.2 ms added latency. Official source releases include detached signatures and SHA-512 checksums for verification.
Good
- More than 100 open-source plugins
- Supports bare metal and Kubernetes deployment
- Hot-reloadable configuration updates without restarts
- AI gateway includes retries and fallback
- Official releases include signatures and checksums
Watch out
- Teams self-manage the open-source deployment
- Commercial support is separate
- Both listed Integration Hub entries are in validation
Who it suits
APISIX suits teams managing API, microservice, or LLM traffic who can operate a self-hosted gateway. Its protocol support and plugin options also suit deployments needing traffic controls, security, and observability integrations.
Verdict
APISIX combines gateway controls, protocol support, and AI traffic features in a self-managed package. Teams should account for operating it themselves; the project lists commercial support separately.
The facts
Each one read from Apache APISIX's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- AI gateway
- Its AI gateway supports multi-provider proxying, load balancing, retries and fallback, token rate limits, prompt security, and prompt transformation.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Architecture
- APISIX is based on NGINX and etcd, with a hot-reloadable plugin pipeline and real-time cluster configuration updates without restarts.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Deployment and protocols
- APISIX can run on bare metal or Kubernetes and supports HTTP-to-gRPC transcoding, WebSocket, gRPC, Dubbo, MQTT proxy, and ARM64.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Downloads
- The downloads page provides official source releases, detached signatures, SHA-512 checksums, and archived versions; it lists version 3.19.0 as current, released 2026-09-28.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Dynamic configuration
- Its hot-reloadable plugin pipeline and etcd distribute configuration across a cluster in real time without restarts.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Integration catalog status
- The Integration Hub page lists two integrations, LocalAI and Redis, and marks both as validation in progress.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- The site lists integrations including Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, Redis, Keycloak, OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek, and Ollama.checked 3 Oct 2026
- License
- The project is licensed under Apache 2.0.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Operational responsibility
- The project describes APISIX as open source that teams can self-manage, with commercial support available separately if required.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Performance
- The homepage reports about 18,000 queries per second per core and 0.2 ms added latency.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Plugin languages
- The project lists Java, Go, and Python plugin runners implemented as sidecars accompanying Apache APISIX.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Plugins
- APISIX offers more than 100 open-source plugins for traffic management, security, observability, and protocol handling.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Protocols and deployment
- APISIX can run on bare metal or Kubernetes and supports HTTP-to-gRPC transcoding, WebSocket, gRPC, Dubbo, MQTT proxy, and ARM64.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Published performance figures
- The homepage states approximately 18,000 QPS per core and 0.2 ms added latency.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Apache APISIX is an open-source API gateway for routing, securing, and managing traffic to APIs, microservices, and LLM workloads.checked 3 Oct 2026
- Release verification
- The downloads page provides source releases with detached signatures and SHA-512 checksums and explains how to verify an archive.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Security
- Security plugins include CORS, JWT, Key Auth, OpenID Connect, and Keycloak; vulnerability reports are directed to the Apache Security Team at [email protected].checked 3 Oct 2026
- Support
- The project FAQ directs users to its Slack channel, mailing list, GitHub Issues, and GitHub Discussions for help.checked 2 Oct 2026
- Support and community
- The site links to community discussion through Slack and GitHub.checked 3 Oct 2026
The company
- Founded
- 2019checked 28 Sep 2026
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