Higress

Higress is a cloud-native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy, providing enterprise-grade API gateway capabilities including traffic management, security, observability, and AI plugin support. It is an open-source project under the CNCF ecosystem.

Higress is listed with 4 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include API Gateway, Cloud-Native, Istio, and Kubernetes.

Higress’ developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, engineering blog, changelog, and 13 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

19.0/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only Front door AI 6/6 dominant self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-23 · rubric v0.25.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

4 APIs

API Gateway Cloud-Native Istio Kubernetes

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-23 · rubric v0.25.0

Composite quality — 19.0/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 1.4 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 3.6 / 10

Contract Governance 0.0 / 9

Discoverability 4.6 / 8

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Open Source Surface 7.5 / 10

Agent readiness — 1/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 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

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

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.

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because both conditional facets apply and carry 25 points together. 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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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 github.com/api-evangelist/higress: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. 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
API Management (gateways, portals, service mesh, proxies)	undeclared	-	-	-

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.

The OpenAI Interface

prose — states compatibility; nothing published to check it against

2 core of 338 operations graded · api-commons/models

APIs 4

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

Higress

Higress is a next-generation cloud-native API gateway that provides intelligent routing, traffic management, authentication, and observability capabilities for microservices arc...

Higress Console API

The Higress Console API provides a RESTful management interface for configuring and administering a running Higress gateway instance. It supports management of ingress routes, s...

Higress AI Gateway

Higress AI Gateway extends the core Higress gateway with AI-specific capabilities including LLM proxy routing, multi-provider support for OpenAI-compatible APIs, prompt templati...

Higress Wasm Plugin API

The Higress Wasm Plugin API provides a WebAssembly-based extension interface for developing and deploying custom plugins on the Higress gateway. Plugins can be written in Go, Ru...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Higress Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Higress Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Higress Finops

FINOPS

Security Posture 1

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

Higress Domain Security

TLSv1.3

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

LlmsText

LlmsText

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

CodeOfConduct

CodeOfConduct

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

SecurityPolicy

SecurityPolicy

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

ChangeLog

Issue Tracker

Community

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

License

License

Company 2

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: higress
name: Higress
description: Higress is a cloud-native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy, providing enterprise-grade API gateway capabilities
  including traffic management, security, observability, and AI plugin support. It is an open-source project under the CNCF
  ecosystem.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: high
  source:
  - license
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
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/higress.png
tags:
- API Gateway
- Cloud-Native
- Istio
- Kubernetes
tags_raw:
- API Gateway
- Cloud Native
- Istio
- Kubernetes
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/higress/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-16'
modified: '2026-04-28'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: higress:higress
  name: Higress
  description: Higress is a next-generation cloud-native API gateway that provides intelligent routing, traffic management,
    authentication, and observability capabilities for microservices architectures.
  humanURL: https://higress.io/en-us/
  tags:
  - API Gateway
  - Cloud-Native
  tags_raw:
  - API Gateway
  - Cloud Native
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/user/quickstart
  - type: Reference
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/ops/config/
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress/releases
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress
- aid: higress:higress-console-api
  name: Higress Console API
  description: The Higress Console API provides a RESTful management interface for configuring and administering a running
    Higress gateway instance. It supports management of ingress routes, service sources, TLS certificates, plugins, and gateway
    configuration through the built-in web console backend.
  humanURL: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/ops/api
  tags:
  - Admin
  - Configuration
  - Management
  - REST
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/ops/api
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress-console
- aid: higress:higress-ai-gateway
  name: Higress AI Gateway
  description: Higress AI Gateway extends the core Higress gateway with AI-specific capabilities including LLM proxy routing,
    multi-provider support for OpenAI-compatible APIs, prompt templating, token-based rate limiting, semantic caching, and
    AI observability. It enables teams to manage and govern traffic to large language model services.
  humanURL: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/plugins/ai/
  tags:
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - API Gateway
  - Cloud-Native
  - LLM
  tags_raw:
  - AI
  - API Gateway
  - Cloud Native
  - LLM
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/plugins/ai/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/user/ai-proxy/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress
- aid: higress:higress-wasm-plugin-api
  name: Higress Wasm Plugin API
  description: The Higress Wasm Plugin API provides a WebAssembly-based extension interface for developing and deploying custom
    plugins on the Higress gateway. Plugins can be written in Go, Rust, C++, or any language that compiles to WebAssembly,
    and can intercept and transform HTTP requests and responses at the gateway level.
  humanURL: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/plugins/custom/
  tags:
  - Cloud-Native
  - Extensions
  - Plugins
  - WebAssembly
  tags_raw:
  - Cloud Native
  - Extensions
  - Plugins
  - WebAssembly
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/plugins/custom/
  - type: Reference
    url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/plugins/custom/go-plugin/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/higress-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/higress-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/higress-finops.yml
- type: SecurityPolicy
  url: https://github.com/higress-group/higress/blob/main/SECURITY.md
- type: CodeOfConduct
  url: https://github.com/higress-group/higress/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- type: License
  name: Apache-2.0
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/higress-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://higress.io/en-us/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://higress.io/en-us/docs/user/quickstart
- type: Blog
  url: https://higress.io/en-us/blog/
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress/releases
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/alibaba
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress
- type: Issue Tracker
  url: https://github.com/alibaba/higress/issues
- type: Community
  url: https://discord.gg/higress
- type: LlmsText
  url: https://higress.io/llms.txt
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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