7 alternatives to Kong Gateway: Apache APISIX and Tyk

Side by side

7 alternatives to Kong Gateway
Tool	Fit	Stars	Licence	Terms	Self-hosted	Language	Latest	Last push
Apache APISIX	Full replacement	17k	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Lua	3.19.0	2026-10-04
Tyk	Full replacement	11k	Other	Open core	Yes	Go	v5.15.1	2026-10-06
Gravitee	Full replacement	457	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Java	4.12.21	2026-10-06
Higress	Partial	9.5k	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Go	v2.2.5	2026-10-04
Apache ShenYu	Partial	8.8k	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Java	v2.7.1	2026-10-06
Easegress	Partial	5.9k	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Go	v2.11.0	2026-07-20
KrakenD	Partial	2.7k	Apache-2.0	Open source	Yes	Go	v3.0.0	2026-09-30

7 alternatives

The Cloud-Native API Gateway and AI Gateway

Also built on OpenResty, with etcd for configuration and plugins in Lua and other languages.

Open Source API and AI Gateway supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP, gRPC and MCP (Model Context Protocol)

API gateway in Go with auth, quotas and plugins.

Gravitee.io - OpenSource API Management

Gateway with policies, a management console and a developer portal, also for event and message APIs.

🤖 AI Gateway | AI Native API Gateway

Built on Envoy and Istio, with Wasm plugins and routing for LLM APIs; no Lua plugin ecosystem.

Apache ShenYu is a Java native API Gateway for service proxy, protocol conversion and API governance.

A Java gateway with plugins for HTTP, gRPC, Dubbo and Spring Cloud services, configured from its own admin console.

A Cloud Native traffic orchestration system. (CNCF Project)

A Go traffic gateway with filters for rate limits, auth and resilience, configured in YAML.

KrakenD Community Edition: High-performance, stateless, declarative, API Gateway written in Go.

Stateless gateway configured from a file, focused on aggregating backends.