Express Gateway

Express Gateway is an open-source (Apache-2.0) microservices and serverless API gateway built on Express.js and Node.js. Operators install it themselves and compose policies — key auth, OAuth 2.0, JWT, CORS, rate limiting, request and response transforms, proxying — into pipelines declared in a single YAML config, fronting their own downstream services. Its own HTTP surface is the Admin API, which manages users, applications, credentials, scopes, schemas, policies, endpoints and pipelines, and which binds by default to localhost:9876 rather than to any host the project runs. The project is dormant: the last release reached npm in April 2021.

Express Gateway publishes 5 API contracts indexed on the APIs.io network, including Apps API, Credentials API, Scopes API, and 2 more. Tagged areas include API Composition, API Gateway, BFF, Open Source, and Microservices.

The Express Gateway catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Express Gateway’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, support, engineering blog, CLI, and 21 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

35.9/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 23/100 agent aware Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 0/100 dormant Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessPaidOpen

1 published contract 2 Agent Skills

API Composition API GatewayBFFOpen Source Microservices Authentication Node.js Reverse Proxy

What this lets a business do 1

Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own contracts. Browse all capabilities →

Cybersecurity Management

BC-620

Credentials

POST /credentials PUT /credentials/{type}/{id}/status PUT /credentials/{type}/{id}/scopes

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 35.9/100 · thin

Contract Quality 8.2 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 8.5 / 15

Access Clarity 0.0 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.3 / 10

Contract Governance 2.9 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 4.0 / 15

Create-or-Update Ergonomics 0.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 23/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created. Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet, not penalised by it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
A2A Agent Card +8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Request/Response Examples +7 pts — share of operations carrying request/response examples; else an Examples / Code Samples link
Registration Without a Human +6 pts — a `registration_endpoint` in the served RFC 8414 / OIDC discovery document
Delegated User Identity +6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)

7 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Access Clarity scores 0.0 — up to +20.0 composite points
Contract Quality scores 43.8 — up to +14.1 composite points
Operational Transparency scores 23.7 — up to +9.9 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/express-gateway/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/express-gateway to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Network Edge (CDN, networking, peering, edge compute)	distribution	9.6 (thin)	-	-
Cisco DevNet Ecosystem (builders on Meraki, Catalyst, ISE, ThousandEyes, Splunk)	distribution	9.6 (thin)	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

Standards implemented 1

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

OpenAPI

measured — observed by APIs.io (published)

APIs 5

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

Express Gateway

Express Gateway is an API gateway built on Express.js for managing and securing microservices and APIs.

Express Gateway Apps API

The Apps API from Express Gateway — 3 operation(s) for apps.

Express Gateway Credentials API

The Credentials API from Express Gateway — 6 operation(s) for credentials.

Express Gateway Scopes API

The Scopes API from Express Gateway — 2 operation(s) for scopes.

Express Gateway Users API

The Users API from Express Gateway — 3 operation(s) for users.

Open Collections 5

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Express Gateway Admin Apps API

OPEN COLLECTION

Express Gateway Admin Apps Credentials API

OPEN COLLECTION

Express Gateway Admin Apps Scopes API

OPEN COLLECTION

Express Gateway Admin Apps Users API

OPEN COLLECTION

Express Gateway Admin API

OPEN COLLECTION

Agent Skills 2

Packaged agent skills for driving this provider's APIs from an AI assistant.

express-gateway-manage-scopes

AGENT SKILL

express-gateway-onboard-api-consumer

AGENT SKILL

Express Gateway API pricing

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Express Gateway Plans Pricing

0 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Express Gateway Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Express Gateway Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Express Gateway API Rules

46 rules · 44 errors 1 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

OpenAPI Overlays 1

Overlays applied on top of this provider's contracts. Each card says who wrote it: a document the provider publishes, or one API Evangelist derived or generated.

Express Gateway Admin Api Overlay

12 actions · update · express-gateway-openapi.yml

DERIVED

Security Posture 2

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

Express Gateway Authentication

apiKey · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Express Gateway Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

Scopes 1

OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.

Express Gateway Scopes

OAuth 2.0 · no documented scopes

0 scopes

SCOPES

Agentic Access 1

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

Express Gateway Agentic Access

25 operations · 16 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 4

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

AgentSkill

AgentSkill

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

X-MCPServerCandidate

X-MCPServerCandidate

Design & Contract 5

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Lifecycle

Conventions

Conformance

ErrorCatalog

DataModel

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

Packages

Packages

CLI

CLI

Access & Security 3

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

OAuthScopes

OAuthScopes

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Roadmap

ChangeLog

RateLimits

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

FinOps

FinOps

Plans

Plans

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

CapabilityMap

CapabilityMap

Overlay

Overlay

Source (apis.yml)

aid: express-gateway
name: Express Gateway
description: 'Express Gateway is an open-source (Apache-2.0) microservices and serverless API gateway built on Express.js
  and Node.js. Operators install it themselves and compose policies — key auth, OAuth 2.0, JWT, CORS, rate limiting, request
  and response transforms, proxying — into pipelines declared in a single YAML config, fronting their own downstream services.
  Its own HTTP surface is the Admin API, which manages users, applications, credentials, scopes, schemas, policies, endpoints
  and pipelines, and which binds by default to localhost:9876 rather than to any host the project runs. The project is dormant:
  the last release reached npm in April 2021.'
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: open-source-self-hosted
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Open source, self-hosted — Apache-2.0, no vendor-operated endpoint
  confidence: high
  source:
  - https://github.com/ExpressGateway/express-gateway
  - https://registry.npmjs.org/express-gateway
  note: 'Corrected 2026-09-07. The GitHub API reports the repository licence as Apache-2.0 and the runtime is distributed
    on npm and Docker Hub, so open_source is true, not false. There is no vendor-operated host: the Admin API''s documented
    default binding is http://localhost:9876. Commercial backing ended with LunchBadger, whose site now returns 522.'
  generated: '2026-09-07'
  method: searched
accessModel:
  pricing: paid
  onboarding: open
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: true
  gated: none
  gated_source:
  - onboarding
  label: Paid · Open access
  confidence: high
  source:
  - finops
  - authentication
  - scopes
  - rate-limits
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/express-gateway.png
tags:
- API Composition
- API Gateway
- BFF
- Open Source
- Microservices
- Authentication
- Node.js
- Reverse Proxy
tags_raw:
- API Composition
- API Gateway
- BFF
- Open Source
- Microservices
- Authentication
- Node.js
- Reverse Proxy
- Open-Source
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/express-gateway/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-27'
modified: '2026-09-07'
position: Producing
access: Open Source
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: express-gateway:express-gateway
  name: Express Gateway
  description: Express Gateway is an API gateway built on Express.js for managing and securing microservices and APIs.
  humanURL: https://www.express-gateway.io/
  tags:
  - API Composition
  - API Gateway
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.express-gateway.io/docs/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://www.express-gateway.io/getting-started/
- aid: express-gateway:express-gateway-apps-api
  name: Express Gateway Apps API
  description: The Apps API from Express Gateway — 3 operation(s) for apps.
  humanURL: https://www.express-gateway.io/
  tags:
  - Application
  tags_raw:
  - Apps
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/express-gateway-apps-api-openapi.yml
- aid: express-gateway:express-gateway-credentials-api
  name: Express Gateway Credentials API
  description: The Credentials API from Express Gateway — 6 operation(s) for credentials.
  humanURL: https://www.express-gateway.io/
  tags:
  - Credentials
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/express-gateway-credentials-api-openapi.yml
- aid: express-gateway:express-gateway-scopes-api
  name: Express Gateway Scopes API
  description: The Scopes API from Express Gateway — 2 operation(s) for scopes.
  humanURL: https://www.express-gateway.io/
  tags:
  - Scopes
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/express-gateway-scopes-api-openapi.yml
- aid: express-gateway:express-gateway-users-api
  name: Express Gateway Users API
  description: The Users API from Express Gateway — 3 operation(s) for users.
  humanURL: https://www.express-gateway.io/
  tags:
  - User
  tags_raw:
  - Users
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/express-gateway-users-api-openapi.yml
common:
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/express-gateway-finops.yml
- type: CapabilityMap
  url: capabilities/express-gateway-capability-edges.yml
  name: Express Gateway Business Capability Map
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/express-gateway-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/express-gateway-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/express-gateway-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/docs/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/ExpressGateway
- type: APIReference
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/docs/admin/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/getting-started/
- type: Support
  url: https://github.com/ExpressGateway/express-gateway/issues
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/blog/
- type: Roadmap
  url: https://www.express-gateway.io/docs/roadmap/
- type: Packages
  url: packages/express-gateway-packages.yml
- type: CLI
  url: cli/express-gateway-cli.yml
- type: ChangeLog
  url: changelog/express-gateway-changelog.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/express-gateway-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/express-gateway-conventions.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/express-gateway-conformance.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
  url: errors/express-gateway-problem-types.yml
- type: OAuthScopes
  url: scopes/express-gateway-scopes.yml
- type: DataModel
  url: data-model/express-gateway-data-model.yml
- type: AgentSkill
  url: skills/_index.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/express-gateway-llms.txt
- type: Overlay
  url: overlays/express-gateway-admin-api-overlay.yaml
- type: Plans
  url: plans/express-gateway-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/express-gateway-rate-limits.yml
- type: X-MCPServerCandidate
  url: mcp/express-gateway-mcp.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-09-07'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 16
  pass: local-v3

Express Gateway API — frequently asked questions

Does Express Gateway have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 5 APIs from Express Gateway, including Express Gateway, Express Gateway Apps API and Express Gateway Credentials API, and 2 more.

Is there an OpenAPI specification for the Express Gateway API?

Yes. APIs.io indexes 4 OpenAPI specifications for Express Gateway, each linked for download from this page.

How do I authenticate with the Express Gateway API?

Express Gateway uses bearer-token authentication (apiKey · 1 scheme). The details are profiled on APIs.io as Express Gateway Authentication.

Is the Express Gateway API ready for AI agents?

Express Gateway has a Kin Score of 35.9 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 23.1 (agent-aware), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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