higress-group/higress

What is it?

Key features

• 01Wasm plugin extensions in Go, Rust, or JS with sandbox isolation and independent plugin upgrades
• 02Unified access to mainstream LLM providers with multi-model load balancing and token rate limiting
• 03Hosting of MCP servers, with openapi-to-mcp conversion for OpenAPI specs
• 04Support for both Kubernetes Ingress API and Gateway API
• 05Service discovery from Nacos, ZooKeeper, Consul, Eureka and integration with Dubbo and Sentinel
• 06Built-in WAF and authentication plugins such as key-auth, jwt-auth, and oidc

Use cases

• Putting a unified gateway in front of multiple LLM providers with observability and caching
• Hosting MCP servers so AI agents can call internal tools and APIs
• Replacing ingress-nginx as a Kubernetes ingress controller
• Acting as a microservice gateway for services registered in Nacos or Consul

Quick start

1. 1

   Create a working directory

   mkdir higress; cd higress
2. 2

   Start Higress with Docker (UI on 8001, gateway on 8080/8443)

   docker run -d --rm --name higress-ai -v ${PWD}:/data -p 8001:8001 -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 higress-registry.cn-hangzhou.cr.aliyuncs.com/higress/all-in-one:latest

Things to know

• !Kubernetes and other installs require following the external Quick Start documentation.
• !The default image registry is in China, so pulls may time out outside the region.

Topics

FAQ

What is higress?

Cloud-native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy, with AI gateway features for LLM providers and MCP server hosting. Higress is a cloud-native API gateway based on Istio and Envoy. It can be extended with Wasm plugins written in Go, Rust, or JS, and ships with a set of general-purpose plugins and a built-in management console.

Is higress free to use? What license does it have?

higress is open source under the Apache-2.0 license. Check the license terms before using it in commercial products.

Is higress still maintained?

Actively maintained. The last commit to higress was on Oct 22, 2026.

What can I use higress for?

Putting a unified gateway in front of multiple LLM providers with observability and caching Hosting MCP servers so AI agents can call internal tools and APIs Replacing ingress-nginx as a Kubernetes ingress controller Acting as a microservice gateway for services registered in Nacos or Consul

How do I install higress?

Create a working directory: mkdir higress; cd higress Start Higress with Docker (UI on 8001, gateway on 8080/8443): docker run -d --rm --name higress-ai -v ${PWD}:/data -p 8001:8001 -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 higress-registry.cn-hangzhou.cr.aliyuncs.com/higress/all-in-one:latest

Where can I get higress?

The source code and installation instructions are on GitHub: https://github.com/higress-group/higress