About Envoy
Envoy is an open source edge and service proxy. It sits in the traffic path between clients, services and AI models, and many gateways and service meshes are built on top of it.
What it does
Envoy handles routing, load balancing, TLS termination and authentication for traffic that passes through it. It exposes detailed Layer 7 metrics, access logs and distributed tracing. Its configuration can change at runtime through dynamic APIs without restarts, and developers can add custom logic with Wasm, Lua, Go or Rust extensions.
Key features
- Dynamic configuration without restarts
- TLS, mutual TLS and JWT authentication
- Access logs, stats and distributed tracing
- Extensions with Wasm, Lua, Go or Rust
- Streaming support for long-lived AI traffic
Who it's for
Infrastructure and platform engineers who build gateways, meshes or proxies, and teams that need deep visibility into service traffic.
Pricing and good to know
Envoy is free and released under the Apache License 2.0. It is a program you run yourself, and its configuration is detailed, so it takes time to learn. The project publishes documentation, training material and community channels, and it is written in C++.
Highlights
- Change routing and clusters without restarts
- Terminate TLS and check JWT tokens
- Read access logs, stats and traces
- Add logic with Wasm, Lua, Go or Rust
- Handle streaming responses for AI traffic
