BFE

BFE (Beyond Front End) is an open-source layer 7 load balancer developed by Baidu, providing advanced traffic routing, forwarding, and load balancing capabilities with support for HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2, WebSocket, TLS, and gRPC. BFE is a CNCF sandbox project licensed under Apache 2.0.

BFE publishes 3 APIs on the APIs.io network: Debug API, Monitor API, and Reload API. Tagged areas include Load Balancer, Networking, Open Source, Traffic Management, and CNCF.

The BFE catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.

BFE’s developer surface includes developer portal, documentation, and 6 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

41.7/100 thin ▼ -8.4 Agent 28/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

AccessFreemium

3 APIs 8 Features 5 Use Cases

Load BalancerNetworkingOpen SourceTraffic ManagementCNCFBaidu

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6

Composite quality — 41.7/100 · thin

Contract Quality 10.8 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 3.5 / 20

Commercial Clarity 7.9 / 20

Operational Transparency 4.8 / 13

Governance 8.3 / 12

Discoverability 6.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 28/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/bfe: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

BFE Debug API

Go pprof debugging and profiling endpoints

BFE Monitor API

Monitor metrics and categories for observability

BFE Reload API

Configuration reload operations

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Bfe Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Bfe Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Bfe Finops

FINOPS

Features 8

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Layer 7 Load Balancing

Advanced HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 load balancing with pluggable algorithms.

Plugin Framework

Extensible plugin system enabling custom traffic management logic.

Multi-tenancy

Isolated configuration and routing per tenant.

Advanced Routing

DSL-based routing rules for fine-grained traffic control.

Protocol Support

HTTP, HTTPS, SPDY, HTTP/2, gRPC, WebSocket, TLS, FastCGI protocols.

Observability

Built-in metrics, logging, and distributed tracing integration.

Dynamic Configuration

Hot reload of routing and load balancing configuration without restart.

CNCF Sandbox

Hosted as a CNCF sandbox project with active community governance.

Scroll for all 8

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Bfe Context

5 classes · 7 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 2

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

BFE API Rules

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

BFE API Rules

25 rules · 13 errors 11 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 5

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

MonitorCategoriesResponse

1 properties

JSON SCHEMA

MonitorMetricsResponse

2 properties

JSON SCHEMA

ReloadEntriesResponse

1 properties

JSON SCHEMA

ReloadEntry

2 properties

JSON SCHEMA

ReloadResponse

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 5

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Bfe Monitor Categories Response Structure

1 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Bfe Monitor Metrics Response Structure

2 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Bfe Reload Entries Response Structure

1 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Bfe Reload Entry Structure

2 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Bfe Reload Response Structure

3 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 5

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Bfe Monitor Categories Response Example

1 fields

EXAMPLE

Bfe Monitor Metrics Response Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Bfe Reload Entries Response Example

1 fields

EXAMPLE

Bfe Reload Entry Example

2 fields

EXAMPLE

Bfe Reload Response Example

3 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Bfe Domain Security

TLSv1.3

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Bfe Agentic Access

7 operations

7 operations · 0 acting

AGENTIC

Use Cases 5

What developers build with this provider.

Enterprise API Gateway

Route and load balance API traffic with per-tenant isolation.

Microservices Traffic Management

Manage east-west and north-south traffic in microservices architectures.

TLS Termination

Terminate TLS/HTTPS at the edge and forward to backend HTTP services.

A/B Testing

Route fractions of traffic to canary deployments using routing rules.

DDoS Mitigation

Use traffic management plugins to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks.

Integrations 4

Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.

Prometheus

Export metrics to Prometheus for monitoring and alerting.

Kubernetes

Deploy BFE as an ingress controller in Kubernetes clusters.

Docker

Run BFE in Docker containers for containerized deployments.

Grafana

Visualize BFE metrics in Grafana dashboards.

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 2

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Vocabulary

Vocabulary

SpectralRules

SpectralRules

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Source (apis.yml)

aid: bfe
name: BFE
description: BFE (Beyond Front End) is an open-source layer 7 load balancer developed by Baidu, providing advanced traffic
  routing, forwarding, and load balancing capabilities with support for HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2, WebSocket, TLS, and gRPC. BFE
  is a CNCF sandbox project licensed under Apache 2.0.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/bfe.png
tags:
- Load Balancer
- Networking
- Open Source
- Traffic Management
- CNCF
- Baidu
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bfe/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-19'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: bfe:bfe-debug-api
  name: BFE Debug API
  description: Go pprof debugging and profiling endpoints
  humanURL: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
  baseURL: http://localhost:8421
  tags:
  - Debug
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/bfe-debug-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
- aid: bfe:bfe-monitor-api
  name: BFE Monitor API
  description: Monitor metrics and categories for observability
  humanURL: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
  baseURL: http://localhost:8421
  tags:
  - Monitor
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/bfe-monitor-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
- aid: bfe:bfe-reload-api
  name: BFE Reload API
  description: Configuration reload operations
  humanURL: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
  baseURL: http://localhost:8421
  tags:
  - Reload
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/bfe-reload-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/operation/api/
common:
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/bfe-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/bfe-domain-security.yml
- type: Portal
  url: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.bfe-networks.net/en_us/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/bfenetworks
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/bfenetworks/bfe
- type: Vocabulary
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bfe/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/bfe-vocabulary.yaml
- type: SpectralRules
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/bfe/refs/heads/main/rules/bfe-spectral-rules.yml
- type: Features
  data:
  - name: Layer 7 Load Balancing
    description: Advanced HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 load balancing with pluggable algorithms.
  - name: Plugin Framework
    description: Extensible plugin system enabling custom traffic management logic.
  - name: Multi-tenancy
    description: Isolated configuration and routing per tenant.
  - name: Advanced Routing
    description: DSL-based routing rules for fine-grained traffic control.
  - name: Protocol Support
    description: HTTP, HTTPS, SPDY, HTTP/2, gRPC, WebSocket, TLS, FastCGI protocols.
  - name: Observability
    description: Built-in metrics, logging, and distributed tracing integration.
  - name: Dynamic Configuration
    description: Hot reload of routing and load balancing configuration without restart.
  - name: CNCF Sandbox
    description: Hosted as a CNCF sandbox project with active community governance.
- type: UseCases
  data:
  - name: Enterprise API Gateway
    description: Route and load balance API traffic with per-tenant isolation.
  - name: Microservices Traffic Management
    description: Manage east-west and north-south traffic in microservices architectures.
  - name: TLS Termination
    description: Terminate TLS/HTTPS at the edge and forward to backend HTTP services.
  - name: A/B Testing
    description: Route fractions of traffic to canary deployments using routing rules.
  - name: DDoS Mitigation
    description: Use traffic management plugins to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks.
- type: Integrations
  data:
  - name: Prometheus
    description: Export metrics to Prometheus for monitoring and alerting.
  - name: Kubernetes
    description: Deploy BFE as an ingress controller in Kubernetes clusters.
  - name: Docker
    description: Run BFE in Docker containers for containerized deployments.
  - name: Grafana
    description: Visualize BFE metrics in Grafana dashboards.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com