What is Nacos used for?

Nacos is a dynamic service discovery, configuration and service management platform for building AI cloud native applications, supporting Kubernetes, Spring Cloud, Spring AI, and Dify. It is a good fit for building microservices and cloud native applications, managing AI agent applications with dynamic service discovery and configuration, and traffic scheduling and service governance in large-scale deployments.

Is Nacos open source?

Yes. Nacos is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at alibaba/nacos and is written mainly in Java.

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

Can I self-host Nacos?

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

What is Nacos an alternative to?

Nacos is an open-source alternative to Azure App Configuration. Other open-source alternatives to Azure App Configuration include Apache ZooKeeper, Kubernetes and Salt Project.

Is Nacos actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Nacos was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.2.4, published on 27 August 2026. The project has 33k stars on GitHub.

Nacos: open-source alternative to Azure App Configuration

About Nacos

Nacos is a platform that provides dynamic service discovery, configuration management, and service management. It is designed for building AI cloud native applications and supports integration with Kubernetes, Spring Cloud, Spring AI, and Dify.

The platform offers a lightweight management console and supports multi-tenant and multi-environment setups. It is production-grade, having been used in Alibaba's internal production for over 10 years, and supports large-scale scenarios with millions of services.

Key features

Dynamic configuration service for centralized, externalized, and dynamic management of configurations across environments
Service discovery supporting DNS-based and RPC-based (Dubbo, gRPC) modes
Real-time health checks to prevent requests to unhealthy hosts or service instances
Support for AI Registry scenarios including Prompt, MCP, and A2A
MCP service management center compatible with MCP official protocol
Traffic scheduling and service governance with rate limiting, promotion plans, and multi-site active-active

Good fit for

Building microservices and cloud native applications
Managing AI agent applications with dynamic service discovery and configuration
Traffic scheduling and service governance in large-scale deployments

Built with: Java tools; Kubernetes tools
Tags: service-discovery; configuration-management; ai; cloud-native; microservices; mcp

Nacos: questions and answers

What is Nacos used for?: Nacos is a dynamic service discovery, configuration and service management platform for building AI cloud native applications, supporting Kubernetes, Spring Cloud, Spring AI, and Dify. It is a good fit for building microservices and cloud native applications, managing AI agent applications with dynamic service discovery and configuration, and traffic scheduling and service governance in large-scale deployments.
Is Nacos open source?: Yes. Nacos is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at alibaba/nacos and is written mainly in Java.
Is Nacos free?: Yes. Nacos is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Nacos?: Yes. Nacos can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Nacos an alternative to?: Nacos is an open-source alternative to Azure App Configuration. Other open-source alternatives to Azure App Configuration include Apache ZooKeeper, Kubernetes and Salt Project.
Is Nacos actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Nacos was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is 3.2.4, published on 27 August 2026. The project has 33k stars on GitHub.