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krakend/krakend-ce

A high-performance, stateless, declarative API Gateway written in Go for routing, aggregating and securing calls to backend microservices.

Open-source alternative to:Kong GatewayApigee

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What is it?

KrakenD is an API Gateway that sits in front of your services, so clients can call one endpoint while the gateway fans requests out to several backends. Configuration is declarative, typically a JSON file, which makes it fit GitOps workflows and lets you create new APIs without changing existing service contracts.

The gateway covers content aggregation and filtering, format transformation between XML and JSON, and concurrent backend calls. It also provides security features such as JWT and OAuth support, CORS, and a set of HTTP security headers, along with rate limiting, throttling, circuit breaking and load balancing between the gateway and services.

Its design is stateless, so each node runs independently without coordination or a central store and can be scaled out horizontally. Telemetry integrations include Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Zipkin and Jaeger, and custom behavior can be added with Lua scripts or Google CEL expressions. This Community Edition is the Apache 2.0 open-source distribution; it is available as a Docker image and as built binaries.

Key features

  • 01Declarative JSON configuration suited to GitOps workflows.
  • 02Aggregates and filters responses from multiple backend services into one endpoint.
  • 03Converts between XML and JSON formats.
  • 04Built-in JWT and OAuth support, CORS, and HTTP security headers.
  • 05Rate limiting, throttling, circuit breaker and load balancing.
  • 06Exports telemetry to Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Zipkin and Jaeger.
  • 07Custom logic via Lua scripts or Google CEL expressions.

Use cases

  • Putting a single public API in front of several microservices.
  • Building Backend For Frontend endpoints tailored to web or mobile clients.
  • Decoupling clients from backend services so APIs can change independently.
  • Running a stateless gateway on Kubernetes or on-premises infrastructure.

Quick start

  1. 1

    Run the official KrakenD Docker image

    docker run -it -p "8080:8080" krakend
  2. 2

    Check the gateway health endpoint at localhost:8080/__health

  3. 3

    Build the binary from source with make (requires Go)

    make build

Things to know

  • Plugin support was dropped in the Community Edition; Go plugins require Enterprise or a custom build.
  • Security fixes are only released for the 3.x line, not 2.13.

Topics

#api-gateway#microservices#reverse-proxy#golang#load-balancing#rate-limiting#jwt#cloud-native#ai-gateway#apis

FAQ

What is krakend-ce?
A high-performance, stateless, declarative API Gateway written in Go for routing, aggregating and securing calls to backend microservices. KrakenD is an API Gateway that sits in front of your services, so clients can call one endpoint while the gateway fans requests out to several backends. Configuration is declarative, typically a JSON file, which makes it fit GitOps workflows and lets you create new APIs without changing existing service contracts.
Is krakend-ce free to use? What license does it have?
krakend-ce is open source under the Apache-2.0 license. Check the license terms before using it in commercial products.
Is krakend-ce still maintained?
Actively maintained. The last commit to krakend-ce was on Oct 21, 2026.
What can I use krakend-ce for?
Putting a single public API in front of several microservices. Building Backend For Frontend endpoints tailored to web or mobile clients. Decoupling clients from backend services so APIs can change independently. Running a stateless gateway on Kubernetes or on-premises infrastructure.
How do I install krakend-ce?
Run the official KrakenD Docker image: docker run -it -p "8080:8080" krakend Check the gateway health endpoint at localhost:8080/__health Build the binary from source with make (requires Go): make build
Where can I get krakend-ce?
The source code and installation instructions are on GitHub: https://github.com/krakend/krakend-ce

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