AWS API Gateway is fine. The bill is not. The team is asking for portability.
Per-request pricing compounded faster than the team modelled. Multi-cloud is on the roadmap. The API layer is now an architectural decision, not a default.
Apache APISIX · for serious startups
APISIX in production. Without the vendor bill.
For engineer-led Australian startups that have outgrown the "AWS API Gateway and call it done" stage but are not ready to sign a six-figure Kong or Mulesoft contract. APISIX is the calm middle path. Open source, fast, sovereign, predictable.
Kong Enterprise and Mulesoft quotes are eye-watering for a series A.
And paying enterprise-tier prices for a startup-scale problem locks you into a vendor curve that compounds against you as you grow. The wrong call now is hard to undo at series C.
APISIX is the right tool for this stage. Open, fast, predictable.
Self-hosted on Kubernetes, cost shape is your infra, governance is Apache. We will help you ship the first slice in two to four weeks.
Why we back APISIX for this stage
Four reasons. All of them survive a series B board review.
Apache governance, no single-vendor risk
APISIX is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project. The roadmap is community-led, the licence is Apache 2.0, the project will outlive any one company sponsoring it. For startups that take vendor liquidity seriously, that matters.
NGINX + Lua performance profile
Built on NGINX with a Lua plugin runner. Latency profile that's hard to beat for ingress and edge use cases. If your gateway is on the request path of your hottest workload, APISIX gives you headroom Kong doesn't.
etcd-backed, Kubernetes-native
Cloud-native by design. etcd-backed control plane, declarative configuration, fits cleanly into a GitOps workflow. If your stack is Kubernetes-first, APISIX is the lower-friction option.
Predictable cost, self-hosted
No per-request SaaS bill, no enterprise tier required for production. The cost shape is your infra, not a vendor's pricing curve. For series A/B/C startups managing burn, that predictability is the headline feature.
Honest comparisons
How APISIX stacks up.
Including the page where we tell you when APISIX is not the answer. That one is on purpose.
APISIX vs Kong Gateway
Kong Inc.
For startups optimising for cost and raw performance with a small ops team, APISIX is the lower-friction choice and that is the call we make most often. For teams already standardised on Kong Mesh or that need a specific plugin from Kong Hub, Kong wins on its own terms.
Read the comparisonAPISIX vs Tyk
Tyk Technologies
Tyk is a credible product and the dashboard is genuinely good. For startups that value out-of-the-box polish and have a smaller ops team, Tyk's managed gateway can save weeks. For teams that want maximum performance, ASF governance, and zero vendor exposure, APISIX wins.
Read the comparisonAPISIX vs AWS API Gateway
Amazon Web Services
AWS API Gateway is hard to beat inside AWS for Lambda-fronted workloads. The trouble starts when traffic ramps and the per-request bill compounds, or when the company outgrows AWS-only and needs a portable layer. APISIX gives you that layer from day one.
Read the comparisonAPISIX vs honest meta-page
Honest meta-page
APISIX is excellent at what it does. It is not always the right tool. The list above is the most credible thing we can put on this page, because it tells you when to ignore our recommendation.
Read the comparison
Ready to ship APISIX into production?
Architecture session with a senior engineer. Bring your current API layer, we will sketch the APISIX equivalent and tell you what the migration looks like.