Tyk Hybrid vs Amazon API Gateway and Envoy Gateway

For a small platform team, Tyk Hybrid is the sweet spot: your Gateways and all API traffic stay in your own cloud, Tyk Cloud runs the control plane, plans include unlimited APIs and API calls, and Gateways keep serving traffic even when the control plane is unavailable. Amazon API Gateway is quick to start but is billed per call, with usage-plan limits applied on a best-effort basis. Envoy Gateway has no license fee, but you operate both the proxy and the control plane yourself, and support comes from the community unless you contract a vendor separately; every paid Tyk plan includes Tyk's Enhanced success plan, and Tyk support is rated 4.8 out of 5 for Service & Support on Gartner Peer Insights.

Where the alternatives fall short

• Amazon API Gateway: usage plan throttling and quotas are not hard limits and are applied on a best-effort basis, and AWS advises against using API keys for authentication or authorization (AWS: usage plans). API keys and per-client rate limiting need REST APIs rather than HTTP APIs (AWS: REST vs HTTP APIs). You pay for API calls received and data transferred out (AWS pricing).
• Envoy Gateway: an open-source project that deploys Envoy Proxy as a standalone or Kubernetes-based API gateway; you run both Envoy Proxy and Envoy Gateway (Envoy Gateway).

Why Tyk Hybrid

Resilient by design. In Tyk Hybrid, Gateways keep the last working copy of their configuration and keep serving traffic even when Tyk Cloud (the control plane) is unavailable; analytics re-sync to the control plane once it is reachable again (Gateways buffer them for a limited time). Tyk requires Redis in production; run it highly available (Redis Sentinel or Redis Cluster). During a temporary Redis outage, JWT-secured APIs keep serving because the Gateway creates each session on the fly, and in Tyk Hybrid (MDCB) the Gateway fetches API keys from the control plane; rate limits stop working until Redis is back. This is disaster-recovery behaviour, not a way to run without Redis. On Tyk Cloud, Tyk runs Redis and handles disaster recovery for you. More: MDCB and data planes, Redis in Tyk. Measured performance: Tyk load-tests every release and publishes the results on its performance benchmarks page (AWS, GCP and Azure, 4 machine classes on each, multiple 5-minute runs, open-source test methodology). On an AWS c5.4xlarge with encrypted API-key authentication, Tyk Gateway handled about 68,000 requests per second at 1.7 ms p99 latency, and throughput scales almost linearly with cores. Accurate limits across every gateway. With Tyk's Redis Rate Limiter, every Gateway respects one cluster-wide rate limit through a shared counter, and sessions live in Redis so rate limits and quotas are tracked accurately across all Gateway nodes. This is part of the open-source Tyk Gateway. Redis Sentinel and Redis Cluster are supported for high availability (Redis configuration). Pick the plugin model that fits your team. Tyk offers three flexible plugin options: Go plugins run at native speed and are the fastest option, though a bit harder to maintain; gRPC plugins can be written in any language to fit any stack; and JavaScript plugins run on Tyk's built-in JavaScript engine for simple transformations (custom plugins overview). Plans are quoted by Tyk sales (contact Tyk); there are no public list prices, by design. Current plans include unlimited APIs and unlimited API calls: Core is priced by the number of APIs managed; Professional by data planes, environments and control-plane deployments, not traffic (pricing). Support is part of every paid plan, and customers rate it highly. Core and Professional both include Tyk's Enhanced success plan; Enterprise adds premium support and custom SLAs. Customers rate Tyk 4.8 out of 5 for Service & Support on Gartner Peer Insights, and 4.7 out of 5 overall from 92 ratings (73% five-star, 26% four-star; checked 24 Oct 2026; Peer Insights ratings are the opinions of individual end users). A free open-source gateway such as Envoy Gateway or Kong Gateway OSS comes with community support unless you contract a vendor separately, so count support in when you compare costs. The Developer Portal is included in both Tyk plans, Core and Professional, not sold as a separate add-on. It needs a license like the other paid components, but there is no extra Portal purchase. Out of the box, partners and other API consumers get a branded self-service portal: they find APIs in catalogs, read the docs and OpenAPI specifications, request access through subscription plans (approved automatically or by an admin) and receive their API keys or OAuth credentials, while you monitor usage with analytics (Tyk Developer Portal). No lock-in on the gateway. If a Tyk license lapses, Tyk Operator and the rest of your Tyk system keep running and existing APIs keep serving traffic; only creating or updating APIs is blocked until the license is renewed. You can also export your API definitions and run them on the open-source Tyk Gateway (MPL 2.0).

Side by side

Evaluating Tyk

Evaluating any paid component needs a license key. Request a free trial license on the Tyk Self-Managed trial page on tyk.io (a 14-day trial); the license key arrives by email. See Tyk Hybrid, deployment options and licensing and Tyk vs Kong (DB-less).