Kitex

Kitex is a high-performance, extensible RPC framework for building microservices in Go, developed by ByteDance. It supports Thrift and Protocol Buffers serialization, provides built-in service governance features including service discovery, load balancing, circuit breaking, and retry policies, and is optimized for high throughput and low latency.

Kitex is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Framework, Go, High Performance, Microservices, and Protocol Buffers.

The Kitex catalog on APIs.io includes 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Kitex’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, engineering blog, and 12 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

21.7/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only Front door AI 2/6 trace Heartbeat 49/100 going silent self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 API

Framework Go High Performance Microservices Protocol Buffers RPCThrift

Kin Score

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

Composite quality — 21.7/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 1.4 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 2.6 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 4.3 / 8

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Open Source Surface 6.5 / 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

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.

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

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
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)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

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

Contract Quality scores 7.2 — up to +23.2 composite points
Access Clarity scores 7.9 — up to +18.4 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 23.8 — up to +15.2 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/kitex/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/kitex 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
Buf Schema Registry (public Protocol Buffers modules, gRPC / ConnectRPC schema publishers)	undeclared	-	-	1

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 2

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.

Protocol Buffers

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

RPC

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

APIs 1

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

Kitex

Kitex is a high-performance, extensible RPC framework for building microservices in Go, developed by ByteDance. It supports Thrift and Protocol Buffers serialization, provides b...

Kitex API pricing

Not yet checked against Kitex's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Kitex's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Kitex Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Kitex Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Kitex Finops

FINOPS

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Kitex — jsonschema rules

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

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

Kitex Service Configuration

3 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 1

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

Kitex Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

ContributionGuide

Documentation

Documentation

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

CodeOfConduct

CodeOfConduct

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 3

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

IssueTracker

IssueTracker

Releases

Releases

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: kitex
name: Kitex
description: Kitex is a high-performance, extensible RPC framework for building microservices in Go, developed by ByteDance.
  It supports Thrift and Protocol Buffers serialization, provides built-in service governance features including service discovery,
  load balancing, circuit breaking, and retry policies, and is optimized for high throughput and low latency.
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: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/kitex.png
tags:
- Framework
- Go
- High Performance
- Microservices
- Protocol Buffers
- RPC
- Thrift
tags_raw:
- Frameworks
- Go
- High Performance
- Microservices
- Protocol Buffers
- RPC
- Thrift
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/kitex/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-26'
modified: '2026-04-28'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: kitex:kitex
  name: Kitex
  description: Kitex is a high-performance, extensible RPC framework for building microservices in Go, developed by ByteDance.
    It supports Thrift and Protocol Buffers serialization, provides built-in service governance features including service
    discovery, load balancing, circuit breaking, and retry policies, and is optimized for high throughput and low latency.
  humanURL: https://www.cloudwego.io/docs/kitex/
  tags:
  - Framework
  - Go
  - High Performance
  - Microservices
  - Protocol Buffers
  - RPC
  - Thrift
  tags_raw:
  - Frameworks
  - Go
  - High Performance
  - Microservices
  - Protocol Buffers
  - RPC
  - Thrift
  properties:
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/kitex/refs/heads/main/json-schema/kitex-configuration.json
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/kitex-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/kitex-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/kitex-finops.yml
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex/issues
- type: Releases
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex/releases
- type: CodeOfConduct
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: License
  name: Apache-2.0
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/kitex-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.cloudwego.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.cloudwego.io/docs/kitex/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://www.cloudwego.io/docs/kitex/getting-started/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/cloudwego/kitex
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.cloudwego.io/blog/
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Kitex API — frequently asked questions

Does Kitex have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from Kitex, including Kitex.

How much does the Kitex API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Kitex, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Kitex API ready for AI agents?

Kitex has a Kin Score of 21.7 out of 100 (emerging) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.6 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

Work with this as data

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Tools for providers

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get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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