APISIX

APISIX is the API gateway that outperforms Kong while being fully open source. Built on NGINX and OpenResty with etcd for configuration, it handles dynamic routing, rate limiting, authentication, and traffic management with 140% better routing performance than Kong in benchmarks.

If you need an API gateway and don't want to pay for Kong Enterprise features, APISIX gives you GraphQL support, canary releases, and secret management — all free. Kong is the market leader with a bigger ecosystem but gates many features behind its enterprise tier. Traefik is the Kubernetes-native alternative. KrakenD is the lightweight, stateless option for API aggregation. Tyk offers a full API management suite with a GUI.

The etcd-based config means zero-downtime route changes. Plugin development in Lua, Java, Go, or Python gives you flexibility. The dashboard is decent for managing routes and upstreams.

The catch: the ecosystem is smaller than Kong's. Fewer integrations, fewer tutorials, smaller community. Lua as the primary plugin language isn't something most teams know. And APISIX's market share (2.9%) means less battle-testing at the extremes than Kong. If your team values community support over raw performance, Kong might still be the safer bet.