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The fastest open-source API Gateway for microservices, offering high performance and linear scalability.

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Reviews on G2
58 reviews tracked

The Bottom Line

Price
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Key facts

  • High-performance, open-source API Gateway for microservices.
  • Handles API aggregation, traffic management, and authentication.
  • Stateless architecture ensures linear scalability and high throughput.

Pros

  • Extremely high performance and throughput (80K+ requests/second)
  • Stateless architecture for linear scalability and consistent performance
  • Simplified management with a single binary and GitOps approach
  • Comprehensive features for API management (aggregation, security, traffic control)
  • Transparent and predictable pricing with unlimited requests/APIs

Cons

  • No specific cons mentioned in the provided text.

What is KrakenD?

KrakenD is a high-performance, open-source API Gateway designed to simplify the adoption and management of microservices. It acts as a stateless, distributed gateway that can connect, secure, aggregate, transform, and filter data from various backend services. Its architecture prioritizes speed, enabling it to handle thousands of requests per second with consistent performance, even under heavy loads. The product is ideal for organizations and developers building and managing complex microservice architectures who need a robust, scalable, and efficient way to expose their APIs. It helps solve common microservice concerns like API aggregation, traffic management, and authentication, allowing development teams to focus on core business logic. KrakenD emphasizes a GitOps approach, where the gateway's configuration is managed through a single binary and version control, reducing infrastructure complexity and costs. It also offers transparent pricing with unlimited requests and APIs across all plans. KrakenD is built for performance-critical environments, evidenced by its ability to achieve over 80,000 requests/second on commodity hardware. It integrates with various services beyond just REST APIs, including message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka), GraphQL, gRPC, and serverless functions (Lambda). The platform also provides extensive features for data manipulation, monitoring through OpenTelemetry, and automatic documentation generation via OpenAPI.

Available on: Web

Ratings Across the Web

4.7 (58 reviews)

KrakenD holds an aggregate rating of 4.7 out of 5 from 58 reviews across G2, last checked March 19, 2026.

Ratings aggregated from independent review platforms. Learn more

Preview

Key Features

  • API Aggregation and Composition
  • Traffic Management (rate limiting, concurrent calls, circuit breaker, IP filtering)
  • Authentication (JWT, OAuth2, OpenID, API-Keys, Basic Auth, mTLS)
  • Services Connectivity (REST, RabbitMQ, SNS, SQS, Kafka, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, Lambda)
  • Data and Protocol Manipulation (field filtering, response enrichment, format conversion)
  • Monitoring & Analytics (OpenTelemetry integrations for logs, metrics, traces)
  • Documentation Generation (OpenAPI exporter)
  • GitOps Operated Configuration

Pricing Plans

Pricing checked Nov 1, 2026. Source: krakend.io, read Nov 1, 2026

KrakenD plans and prices, checked November 2026
Plan Price Details
Open Source

Free

Enterprise

Contact us

Is KrakenD worth the price?

Great value

KrakenD's pricing is extremely generous with its robust Open Source tier being completely Free.

The Enterprise tier, while requiring a custom quote, is typical for high-performance API gateways. This structure is best for organizations prioritizing cost-efficiency and control, from startups to large enterprises.

Full KrakenD pricing: every plan, hidden costs and alternatives

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KrakenD by the numbers

KrakenD compared with 453 DevOps tools on Toolradar, as of Nov 2026
Metric KrakenD Peer median Position (1 is best)
Free plan Yes 74% have one n/a
Listed as an alternative to 1 tool 2 #240 of 453 (joint)
User rating 4.7/5 (across the web, 58 ratings) 4.5/5 #20 of 171 (joint) tools with 20+ reviews

Listed as an alternative to: #242 on 2026-10-16 to #240 on 2026-11-05 (rank among 453 tools, 1 is best).

Each position is counted among the tools that have data for that row, as noted under it. All DevOps data · How we compute this. Advertising and placement fees are not inputs to any position.

Cite this: Toolradar, “KrakenD by the numbers”, Nov 2026.

Reviews

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4.7/5

Across 58 verified user reviews on G2

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KrakenD FAQ

How does KrakenD achieve its high performance and scalability?

KrakenD is built with a stateless, distributed architecture and a performance-first approach for every internal component. This design allows it to handle thousands of requests per second and achieve true linear scalability, even on commodity hardware.

What types of authentication methods does KrakenD support for securing APIs?

KrakenD supports a comprehensive range of authentication methods for both end-user validation and gateway-to-service validation. These include JWT, Client credentials, OAuth2, OpenID, API-Keys, Basic Auth, and mTLS.

Can KrakenD integrate with various backend services beyond traditional REST APIs?

Yes, KrakenD offers extensive connectivity options, allowing it to integrate with a wide array of services. This includes messaging queues like RabbitMQ, SNS, SQS, and Kafka, as well as GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, and serverless functions like Lambda.

How does KrakenD facilitate API documentation and management?

KrakenD includes an OpenAPI exporter that automatically generates rich documentation websites. It also allows users to create their API gateway directly from existing OpenAPI specifications, streamlining the documentation and development process.

What capabilities does KrakenD offer for traffic management and control?

KrakenD provides robust traffic management features to control API access and behavior. These include rate limiting, concurrent call management, shadow proxying, bot detection, circuit breakers, and IP filtering.

How does KrakenD support a GitOps approach for managing API gateways?

KrakenD is designed to be managed in a GitOps way, requiring only a single binary and its configuration. This allows users to store the API gateway configuration in a version control system and delegate specific parts to different teams, aligning with modern infrastructure management practices.

Source: krakend.io

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