Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Amazon API Gateway

Traefik Proxy is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer designed for dynamic, cloud-native environments. It discovers services from your orchestrator or service registry and automatically configures routing without requiring manual updates for each change.

Key Features

• Automatic service discovery and dynamic configuration from providers such as Docker and Kubernetes
• Layer 7 routing based on hostnames, paths, headers, and other request attributes
• Built-in HTTPS with automatic certificate provisioning and renewal via ACME
• Load balancing with multiple strategies plus health checks
• Support for WebSocket, HTTP/2, and gRPC traffic
• Observability features including metrics, structured access logs, and a web dashboard
• Exposes an administrative API for inspecting configuration and runtime state

Use Cases

• Ingress controller for Kubernetes clusters with dynamic routing to services
• Reverse proxy for Docker or Docker Compose stacks with automatic route updates
• Central edge proxy in microservice architectures to standardize TLS and traffic management

Limitations and Considerations

• Major version upgrades can introduce breaking configuration changes and may require migration steps

Traefik Proxy is well-suited for teams running frequently changing workloads that need reliable routing, TLS automation, and visibility. It fits both small homelab deployments and production platform engineering environments where dynamic service discovery is essential.

Kong Gateway is a cloud-native, platform-agnostic gateway for managing API traffic at the edge of your services. It provides high-performance proxying, routing, and policy enforcement, and extends functionality through a large ecosystem of plugins.

Key Features

• Reverse proxy and routing for L7 traffic, with load balancing and active health checks
• Centralized authentication and authorization using plugins (for example JWT, OAuth 2.0, and ACL-based policies)
• Rate limiting, request/response transformations, and traffic controls via plugins
• Admin API for configuration and automation, plus support for declarative configuration (DB-less mode)
• Observability integrations and export of gateway telemetry via OpenTelemetry-compatible tooling
• Kubernetes-native operation via official ingress controller integration

Use Cases

• Secure and manage microservices APIs with a centralized gateway layer
• Standardize authentication, rate limiting, and request transformations across multiple services
• Operate an ingress/gateway layer for Kubernetes workloads with consistent policies

Limitations and Considerations

• Some capabilities advertised on the vendor site may be specific to enterprise or hosted offerings rather than the open-source edition

Kong Gateway is a strong fit for teams that need a scalable, extensible API gateway with broad plugin support and modern cloud-native deployment options. It helps centralize cross-cutting concerns like security, traffic management, and observability for API-driven systems.

Tyk Gateway is a cloud-native, open source API gateway used to publish, secure, and manage APIs across on-prem, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. It sits in front of upstream services to enforce authentication, traffic controls, and governance for multiple protocols.

Key Features

• Supports multiple protocols including REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and TCP proxying
• Authentication and authorization options including JWT and OpenID Connect
• Rate limiting, quotas, and traffic controls to protect upstream services
• Policy-based access control with per-API and per-endpoint restrictions
• Request/response transformation and content mediation
• Plugin and middleware extensibility (including gRPC-based plugins)
• Analytics and event hooks such as webhooks on gateway events
• Hot reload / hitless configuration reloads for minimal disruption

Use Cases

• Central API gateway for microservices with consistent auth and rate limits
• Exposing internal services to partners with granular access policies
• Managing mixed API styles (REST/GraphQL/gRPC) behind a single edge layer

Tyk Gateway is suitable for teams that need a flexible, high-performance gateway with strong policy controls and broad protocol support. It can be deployed as a lightweight gateway layer and expanded with additional Tyk components for broader API management needs.

Lura is an open framework for building ultra high-performance API gateways and reverse proxies, designed to sit between clients and multiple backend services. It helps consolidate and tailor API responses for frontends by aggregating, transforming, and shrinking payloads, while staying stateless and extensible.

Key Features

• Aggregates multiple backend services into single gateway endpoints
• Response transformation features such as grouping, wrapping, and field selection to reduce payload size
• Extensible middleware and plugin architecture to add functionality (for example, authorization layers)
• Designed for stateless operation suitable for cloud-native and on-prem deployments
• Built as reusable Go libraries to embed gateway capabilities into your own applications

Use Cases

• Build a backend-for-frontend (BFF) layer to reduce client-side complexity in microservice architectures
• Create a reverse proxy that centralizes cross-cutting concerns like authentication and request/response handling
• Expose simplified, optimized endpoints for mobile or web applications that otherwise require multiple backend calls

Lura is a strong fit when you need a fast, composable API gateway foundation and prefer assembling your gateway behavior through reusable components and middleware. It can be used as a framework in custom Go services or as the core technology behind production-ready gateway distributions.

Zoraxy is a general-purpose HTTP reverse-proxy and forwarding gateway designed for homelab and self-hosted services. It provides a web UI for configuring proxies, TLS, routing and runtime utilities so users can expose and manage services from a single gateway. (github.com)

Key Features

• HTTP reverse proxy supporting virtual directories, alias hostnames and custom headers. (github.com)
• Automatic WebSocket proxying and stream proxy support for TCP/UDP forwarding.
• TLS/SSL management with ACME (Let's Encrypt) support, auto-renew and SNI/SAN certificate handling; includes DNS challenge integrations. (github.com)
• Load balancing, basic auth, redirection rules and blacklist/whitelist controls (IP/CIDR/country). (github.com)
• Real-time analytics and uptime monitoring with instant network/visitor statistics and no-reload access control. (zoraxy.aroz.org)
• Plugin system and built-in utilities (mDNS scanner, Wake-on-LAN, IP/port scanners, debug forward proxy). (github.com)
• Web-based SSH terminal for in-browser administration. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Expose and route multiple self-hosted web apps (home server, NAS, media servers) behind a single, manageable reverse proxy. (github.com)
• Provide TLS/ACME certificate automation and DNS-challenge workflows for services without manual cert management. (github.com)
• Monitor service availability and traffic in real time, and run network utilities (scans, WOL) from the gateway UI. (zoraxy.aroz.org)

Limitations and Considerations

• Some advanced modules are community-maintained or seeking maintainers (notably ACME integration improvements and an extended logging/analysis module), which may affect feature completeness for large-scale deployments. (github.com)

Zoraxy is lightweight and targeted at homelab users and small deployments that need a single gateway for routing, TLS and basic observability. It is distributed with prebuilt binaries and Docker artifacts and can be built from source with Go, making it suitable for ARM/SBC and x86 environments. (zoraxy.aroz.org)

KrakenD Community Edition is an open-source, high-performance API gateway designed for microservices and distributed architectures. It provides a stateless runtime that scales horizontally without centralized coordination, using declarative configuration to define routing and gateway behavior.

Key Features

• Stateless, distributed architecture designed for linear horizontal scalability
• Declarative configuration suited for GitOps-style API lifecycle management
• Reverse proxy and API gateway capabilities for REST-style backends
• API aggregation/composition and response shaping (filtering and transformation)
• Traffic control features such as throttling and rate limiting
• Security features including CORS support and token-based auth patterns (for example JWT)
• Observability integrations via exporters for metrics, logs, and traces
• Extensibility through plugins and scripting (including Go plugins and Lua)

Use Cases

• Unified gateway for microservices with centralized policy enforcement
• Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) APIs that aggregate multiple services into one endpoint
• High-throughput edge gateway with rate limiting and observability integration

KrakenD-CE is a strong fit when you want a fast, lightweight API gateway delivered as a single binary, while keeping configuration and operational workflows compatible with modern CI/CD and infrastructure automation practices.

SQLPage is an SQL-only web application builder that turns SQL files into interactive web pages, forms, charts, and APIs. It runs as a web server and maps query results to prebuilt UI components, letting you build data-centric apps without writing backend code.

Key Features

• SQL-driven pages: serve routes by executing corresponding .sql files
• Built-in UI components for lists, tables, cards, charts, forms, and navigation
• CRUD workflows via SQL statements (SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) with request parameters
• Database connectivity for SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, and Microsoft SQL Server, plus ODBC-compatible engines
• Custom components and theming via Handlebars templates and optional HTML/CSS/JS
• Can expose JSON endpoints to build simple REST-style APIs
• Single-binary deployment with Docker support

Use Cases

• Internal admin tools and operational dashboards with drill-down navigation
• Lightweight CRUD apps for teams that already use a relational database
• Rapid prototyping of database-backed tools and simple data APIs

SQLPage is a good fit when you want a maintainable, database-first approach to building web interfaces, keeping logic close to SQL while still allowing optional frontend customization as needed.

Fusio is a self-hosted API management platform for building and operating APIs through a central gateway. It helps expose existing systems (like databases or microservices) as modern REST endpoints and provides tooling for documentation, consumers, and lifecycle management.

Key Features

• API gateway to route and mediate requests to internal services and backends
• API management backend UI for configuring routes, schemas, and access
• Developer portal capabilities for API consumers (documentation and onboarding)
• OpenAPI-based API documentation and specification generation
• SDK automation to generate client SDKs for multiple languages
• Usage analytics to observe API consumption and detect issues
• Extensible app system with installable web apps and integrations

Use Cases

• Expose legacy databases as managed REST APIs
• Provide a managed API gateway for microservices and internal systems
• Publish and operate partner or public APIs with a developer portal and client SDKs

Fusio is a strong fit for teams that want a self-managed, extensible API platform combining gateway, management UI, and developer-facing tooling in one product.

DreamFactory is an API generation platform that automatically creates REST APIs for databases and other data sources. It provides a web-based administration interface to configure connections, manage users, and secure endpoints without building a custom backend from scratch.

Key Features

• Automatic REST API generation from database schemas
• Supports a range of SQL and NoSQL backends (capabilities vary by edition)
• Web-based admin console for configuration and management
• Built-in authentication and authorization, including role-based access control
• API key support and multiple auth methods (capabilities vary by edition)
• Server-side scripting hooks to add custom business logic to requests and responses
• Generates API definitions and documentation (OpenAPI support)

Use Cases

• Create an API layer in front of legacy databases for modern web and mobile apps
• Standardize access to multiple data sources through consistent REST endpoints
• Rapidly prototype internal APIs with fine-grained access controls

Limitations and Considerations

• The open-source edition has reduced functionality compared to commercial offerings (for example, some connectors and advanced security/governance features may be unavailable)

DreamFactory is a strong fit when you need a secure API middle layer quickly, especially for existing databases and legacy systems. It emphasizes rapid API delivery with centralized administration and policy-driven access control.

Graphweaver is a code-first GraphQL backend that connects multiple data sources behind a single GraphQL API. It focuses on fast bootstrapping with generated CRUD operations while keeping everything fully customizable in TypeScript.

Key Features

• Connect multiple data sources (SQL databases and external APIs) behind one GraphQL schema
• Instant CRUD GraphQL API with filtering, sorting, and pagination
• Cross-source filtering to query and filter across different backends
• Code generation to introspect supported databases and generate TypeScript resolvers
• Granular security controls including RBAC plus row-level and column-level permissions
• Built-in, extensible admin panel for browsing and managing connected data

Use Cases

• Build a unified GraphQL gateway over multiple databases and SaaS/REST services
• Rapidly scaffold an internal admin tool for operational data management
• Add fine-grained authorization to CRUD APIs without losing code-level control

Graphweaver is well-suited for teams that want Hasura-like acceleration while keeping a standard, hackable GraphQL server and UI that can be adapted to production requirements.