What is KrakenD used for?

KrakenD Community Edition is a stateless, declarative API gateway written in Go for microservices, aggregation and secure API traffic. It is a good fit for moving from a monolith to microservices and building backend-for-frontend API layers.

Is KrakenD open source?

Yes. KrakenD is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at krakend/krakend-ce and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. KrakenD is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host KrakenD?

Yes. KrakenD can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is KrakenD an alternative to?

KrakenD is an open-source alternative to Amazon API Gateway, Apigee, Azure API Management and IBM API Connect. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon API Gateway include Kong, Apache APISIX and Tyk.

Is KrakenD actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to KrakenD was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is v3.0.0, published on 30 September 2026. The project has 2.7k stars on GitHub.

KrakenD: open-source alternative to Amazon API Gateway

About KrakenD

KrakenD Community Edition is the open-source distribution of the KrakenD API gateway, written in Go and licensed under Apache-2.0. The gateway sits in front of backend services to help teams adopt microservices and backend-for-frontend patterns while securing communications. It is stateless, so each node works independently in a cluster with no central coordination.

Configuration is declarative, which fits a GitOps approach to managing the API lifecycle. The gateway can aggregate, compose and filter content from several APIs into one response, transform formats such as XML to JSON and back, and make concurrent calls to speed up responses. Security features include zero-trust policies, CORS, OAuth, JWT, HSTS and protections against clickjacking and XSS.

It is platform-agnostic, running in cloud-native environments such as Kubernetes or on-premises, and it avoids lock-in by leaving telemetry and identity to existing tools. Project topics also mention GraphQL, NATS, async handling and AI gateway use. It decouples clients from existing services, so new APIs can be created without changing current API contracts.

Key features

Stateless API gateway written in Go
Declarative configuration for GitOps workflows
Aggregation and filtering of multiple API responses
XML and JSON format transformation
JWT, OAuth and CORS security options
Runs on Kubernetes or on-premises

Good fit for

→Moving from a monolith to microservices
→Building backend-for-frontend API layers

Built with: Go; Docker; GraphQL
Tags: api-gateway; microservices; go; reverse-proxy; cloud-native; graphql; kubernetes; self-hosted

KrakenD: questions and answers

What is KrakenD used for?: KrakenD Community Edition is a stateless, declarative API gateway written in Go for microservices, aggregation and secure API traffic. It is a good fit for moving from a monolith to microservices and building backend-for-frontend API layers.
Is KrakenD open source?: Yes. KrakenD is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at krakend/krakend-ce and is written mainly in Go.
Is KrakenD free?: Yes. KrakenD is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host KrakenD?: Yes. KrakenD can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is KrakenD an alternative to?: KrakenD is an open-source alternative to Amazon API Gateway, Apigee, Azure API Management and IBM API Connect. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon API Gateway include Kong, Apache APISIX and Tyk.
Is KrakenD actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to KrakenD was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is v3.0.0, published on 30 September 2026. The project has 2.7k stars on GitHub.