Compare the Top Free API Gateways as of April 2025

What are Free API Gateways?

An API gateway is the server or node located between client and backend services or microservices endpoints. API gateways are used for API management, with the API gateway managing and processing API requests that come in via microservices. Another way to think of an API gateway is that it is the software layer that lives in front of an API interface, which handles API requests. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free API Gateways currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    KrakenD

    KrakenD

    KrakenD

    KrakenD is a high-performance API Gateway optimized for resource efficiency, capable of managing 70,000 requests per second on a single instance. The stateless architecture allows for straightforward, linear scalability, eliminating the need for complex coordination or database maintenance. It supports various protocols and API specifications, with features like fine-grained access controls, data transformation, and caching. Unique to KrakenD is its ability to aggregate multiple API responses into one, streamlining client-side operations. Security-wise, KrakenD aligns with OWASP standards and doesn't store data, making compliance simpler. It offers a declarative configuration and integrates with third-party logging and metrics tools. With transparent pricing and an open-source option, KrakenD is a comprehensive API Gateway solution for organizations prioritizing performance and scalability.
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  • 2
    Tyk

    Tyk

    Tyk Technologies

    Tyk is a leading Open Source API Gateway and Management Platform, featuring an API gateway, analytics, developer portal and dashboard. We power billions of transactions for thousands of innovative organisations. By making our capabilities easily accessible to developers, we make it fast, simple and low-risk for big enterprises to manage their APIs, adopt microservices and adopt GraphQL. Whether self-managed, cloud or a hybrid, our unique architecture and capabilities enable large, complex, global organisations to quickly deliver highly secure, highly regulated API-first applications and products that span multiple clouds and geographies.
    Starting Price: $600/month
  • 3
    Azure API Management
    Manage APIs across clouds and on-premises: In addition to Azure, deploy the API gateways side-by-side with the APIs hosted in other clouds and on-premises to optimize API traffic flow. Meet security and compliance requirements while enjoying a unified management experience and full observability across all internal and external APIs. Move faster with unified API management: Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Streamline your work across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a single place for managing all your APIs. Help protect your resources: Selectively expose data and services to employees, partners, and customers by applying authentication, authorization, and usage limits.
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    WSO2 API Manager
    One complete platform for building, integrating, and exposing your digital services as managed APIs in the cloud, on-premises, and hybrid architectures to drive your digital transformation strategy. Implement industry-standard authorization flows — such as OAuth, OpenID Connect, and JWTs — out of the box and integrate with your existing identity access or key management tools. Build APIs from existing services, manage APIs from internally built applications and from third-party providers, and monitor their usage and performance from inception to retirement. Provide real-time access to API usage and performance statistics to decision-makers to optimize your developer support, continuously improve your services, and drive further adoption to reach your business goals.
  • 5
    Amazon API Gateway
    Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. APIs act as the "front door" for applications to access data, business logic, or functionality from your backend services. Using API Gateway, you can create RESTful APIs and WebSocket APIs that enable real-time two-way communication applications. API Gateway supports containerized and serverless workloads, as well as web applications. API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, CORS support, authorization and access control, throttling, monitoring, and API version management. API Gateway has no minimum fees or startup costs. You pay for the API calls you receive and the amount of data transferred out and, with the API Gateway tiered pricing model, you can reduce your cost as your API usage scales.
    Starting Price: $0.90
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