Industry-leading open source API gateway

Tyk’s open source API gateway was designed for developers. We give you complete control over which tools you use it with and a commitment that our open source API gateway will be free to use, now and forever. 

Businesses love Tyk’s efficiency and flexibility. Whatever you need to focus on – access control, a load balancer, version control or any of the hundred other tasks involved in managing APIs successfully – you can do it better with Tyk.

Tyk helps you achieve unmatched API performance through a range of key features and functions. We make caching, payload compression, throttling, rate limiting and using efficient data formats easy. We also support efficient middleware optimization, enforced timeout mechanisms, circuit breaker patterns and load balancing. All backed up by real-time monitoring so that you can immediately detect and address any issues.

Open source code and open standards mean you can see what’s going on and innovate, connect and collaborate fast. Open source API gateways are the backbone of modern application architecture, putting this ability to innovate at the heart of your business. They support efficiency and innovation in everything from your backend to your upstream services. Whether you’re building something simple or vast microservice architectures, an open source API gateway can support robust security, powerful performance and seamless digital experiences.

It’s easy to design, implement and test your APIs with Tyk. You can get started in minutes thanks to our ‘batteries included’ philosophy. You simply add an API to Tyk, create a security policy and create an API key. It’s that simple. (Developer portals are also available for Tyk Enterprise customers, meaning you can add an API to your portal for third-party developer access.)

By providing a powerful open source API gateway, Tyk supports you to develop and deploy APIs with ease. It means you can focus on achieving your goals and getting your products to market faster.

At Tyk, we believe that open source is the future, enabling collaboration and innovation. If you are currently choosing an open source API gateway, consider aspects such as scalability, performance, API security, authentication and authorization mechanisms, rate limiting, monitoring, analytics and more. And don’t forget to factor in cost. Did we mention that Tyk’s open source API gateway is free, now and forever?

Tyk’s gateway was designed with developers in mind and an open source, vendor agnostic, open standards based approach, giving you complete control over which tools you use it with.

It’s highly configurable, flexible, and can be automated into your custom CI/CD pipelines. Rather than forcing you to work in a particular “Tyk way,” Tyk molds around your existing stack and workflows, making it easier to integrate with your infrastructure.

Yes, Tyk’s Open Source API Gateway is completely free to use. This is part of Tyk’s commitment to the open source philosophy. The gateway has been downloaded millions of times and is available via GitHub. Tyk believes that open source benefits everyone by fostering innovation and business success.

 Tyk provides community support through its Community Forum where you can ask questions or browse previously answered queries. The company also runs regular online workshops and webinars, shares scenarios and case studies, publishes insights on its blog, and provides extensive documentation.

While the open source version doesn’t include enterprise support, you can access a community of over 1,200 members for assistance.

Tyk helps you achieve unmatched API performance through features like caching, payload compression, throttling, rate limiting, and efficient data formats. It also supports middleware optimization, enforced timeout mechanisms, circuit breaker patterns, and load balancing. Real-time monitoring allows you to immediately detect and address any performance issues, supporting superior reliability. 

Absolutely. Tyk’s no-vendor-lock-in approach means you can integrate it with whatever tools you prefer, including paid, open source, made by Tyk, or made by others.

The gateway is designed to mold around your existing stack and can be customized and integrated with your infrastructure as needed. A strong commitment to open standards underpins Tyk’s superior flexibility and easy integration with an extensive range of tooling. 

Tyk Gateway embraces open standards including the OpenAPI Specification (OAS), OAuth, Open Policy Agent (OPA), and OpenTelemetry (OTel). This commitment to open standards ensures interoperability and allows you to leverage the power of these widely-adopted technologies in your API management approach. From Tyk 5.8 onwards, Tyk provides OAS-native API management for secure, interoperable and governance-first API experiences. 

Tyk makes it easy to get started. You sign up for free, then receive securely packaged open source packages and getting started guides. The gateway is designed to make it fast and simple to get started in minutes, with intuitive processes for adding an API to Tyk, creating a security policy, and creating an API key.

Comprehensive documentation and community resources are available to help you through the setup process.

yk’s gateway is designed to be highly performant and cloud-native, capable of supporting everything from simple applications to vast microservice architectures, ensuring you can scale in line with your business goals.

Its efficiency and flexibility make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, from startups to global enterprises processing millions of API calls. With low latency and thousands of rps with just a single CPU, the gateway is scalable horizontally and vertically.