About KrakenD
KrakenD is an API gateway that sits in front of your services. It routes requests, combines data from several backends and handles shared concerns in one place.
What it does
KrakenD receives client requests and forwards them to the services behind it. It can merge several responses into one, transform the data on the way through, and remove fields that clients should not see. Traffic management, authentication and other common concerns are handled at the gateway, so each microservice does not need its own copy of that logic. It is a stateless program, which makes it easy to run several instances behind a load balancer. Its configuration is kept in a single file, which suits a GitOps workflow.
Key features
- Route requests from clients to many backend services
- Combine several data sources into one response
- Run as a single binary with a configuration file
- Handle shared concerns once instead of in every service
- Manage traffic and rate limits at the gateway
Who it's for
Platform teams and backend teams that run many microservices will find a gateway like this useful. Teams that want a simple way to expose one API to many clients will also benefit.
Pricing and good to know
The community edition is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and self-hosted. Commercial editions are also offered, and the company describes its plans as flat, with no per-request charges. Because it is self-hosted, you are responsible for running, scaling and monitoring the gateway in your own infrastructure.
Highlights
- Route requests from clients to many backend services
- Combine several data sources into one response
- Run as a single binary with a configuration file
- Handle shared concerns once instead of in every service
- Manage traffic and rate limits at the gateway
