Shenyu

Open source alternative to Kong Konnect, Apigee and WSO2 API Manager

8.9K stars
Apache-2.0
Active this week
Last commit today

Last verified Oct 25, 2026

Manage, secure, and route multi-protocol API traffic with a Java-native gateway supporting HTTP, gRPC, Dubbo, and WebSocket via extensible plugins.

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Read the full breakdownWho it is for, how it works, trade-offs, the quick start and the FAQ

who it's for

Who Shenyu is for#

Java and Spring Cloud teams standardizing API governance

Teams running multiple Spring Cloud or Dubbo microservices can register service addresses via ShenYu's client SDKs and manage routing, authentication, and rate limiting from a single Admin console. The plugin chain applies policies across all registered services without custom proxy code.

Skip if:

If your services are entirely in a non-Java stack (Go, Node.js, Python) and you need language-native middleware without a JVM dependency, a lighter-weight gateway may fit better.

Platform engineers governing mixed-protocol backends

ShenYu's support for HTTP, gRPC, Dubbo, WebSocket, and MQTT lets platform engineers apply a single governance layer across heterogeneous service backends. Rate limiting, WAF rules, and observability plugins cover all protocols from one Admin interface without per-protocol tools.

Skip if:

If your entire stack is HTTP/REST and you need a simple reverse proxy with no JVM dependency, a lightweight HTTP-only gateway like Caddy is simpler to operate.

Organizations migrating off commercial API management platforms

Teams looking to exit per-call or per-node pricing from Kong Konnect, Apigee, or WSO2 can move API governance to ShenYu on existing compute infrastructure. The Admin console covers authentication, rate limiting, and observability without a managed-service subscription.

Skip if:

If your organization requires vendor SLA guarantees, managed compliance certifications, or 24/7 enterprise support, a commercial managed gateway remains the lower-risk choice.

Teams routing AI workloads through a multi-protocol gateway

The AI proxy plugin handles prompt processing, token limits, and sensitive-word filtering. The MCP server plugin with SSE and Streamable HTTP support makes ShenYu a gateway layer for services exposing Model Context Protocol endpoints alongside standard microservice traffic.

Skip if:

If your AI gateway needs are limited to LLM provider routing without broader multi-protocol service mesh requirements, a dedicated LLM gateway is more focused and simpler to configure.

the problem

The problem it solves#

Managing API traffic across a microservice landscape becomes expensive and limiting when you rely on commercial gateway platforms. Kong Konnect and Apigee charge per API call or per gateway node, meaning costs grow with traffic and lock pricing to vendor contracts. WSO2 API Manager carries significant operational overhead and licensing complexity for teams that want to govern internal service-to-service calls alongside public API exposure.

The deeper challenge is protocol heterogeneity. Most enterprises do not run pure HTTP/REST stacks; they have legacy Dubbo RPC services, gRPC backends, WebSocket connections, and MQTT devices all needing a unified governance point. Commercial gateways typically require plugin licenses or additional tiers to support non-HTTP protocols, while self-managed Java teams are left writing custom proxy code or deploying multiple gateway products side by side.

how Shenyu solves it

How it solves it#

Multi-Protocol Proxy

Routes HTTP/REST, Apache Dubbo, gRPC, WebSocket, and MQTT traffic through a single gateway entry point. A Kubernetes controller reconciles Ingress and Endpoints resources for cloud-native deployments. SOFA and Tars proxy support is available via external plugin-store starters.

Extensible Plugin Chain

An ordered plugin chain processes every request, with Spring Boot starters selecting built-in plugins. Custom Java plugins, SPI implementations, and WASM plugin APIs extend the gateway without forking core code. New plugin capabilities load dynamically without a gateway restart.

Security and Traffic Control

WAF, JWT, OAuth 2.0, request signing, and authentication plugins protect APIs at the edge. Rate limiting and circuit breaking via Resilience4j and Sentinel keep services stable under variable load, and load balancing distributes traffic across upstream instances.

ShenYu Admin Console

A visual management console handles plugin configuration, selector and rule editing, metadata, and authentication data. Configuration changes sync to all gateway replicas over WebSocket by default; HTTP long polling, ZooKeeper, Nacos, and etcd are available as alternative sync transports.

Observability and Alerting

Metrics and logging plugins ship data to Kafka and Elasticsearch destinations. Email and DingTalk alerts notify on-call teams from Admin when thresholds are crossed. Response caching (in-memory or Redis-backed), URL rewriting, and request/response transformation are available as plugins.

AI Proxy and MCP Server

An AI proxy plugin handles prompt processing, token limits, and sensitive-word filtering for AI-backed services. An MCP server plugin with SSE and Streamable HTTP transport provides a gateway layer for services exposing Model Context Protocol endpoints alongside standard API traffic.

strengths · trade-offs

Strengths and trade-offs#

Strengths

Apache-2.0 license with no per-call feesLicensed under Apache-2.0, ShenYu runs on your infrastructure without API-call charges or per-node license fees. Unlike Kong Konnect's usage-based pricing or Apigee's Google Cloud billing, you pay only for compute. Commercial use is unrestricted; the license imposes no limits on internal or external API traffic volume.
Java-native design for Spring Cloud and Dubbo stacksWritten in Java with reactive async processing, ShenYu integrates into Spring Cloud and Dubbo service registries without language-boundary friction. Teams can register service addresses via the provided client SDKs and begin routing without a gateway rewrite or separate protocol translation layer.
Unified protocol governance across a heterogeneous stackHTTP, Dubbo, gRPC, WebSocket, and MQTT share one routing and governance layer. Organizations with heterogeneous service backends avoid deploying a separate gateway per protocol, keeping security rules, rate limits, and routing policies in one Admin console rather than spread across multiple tools.
Active Apache top-level project with production usersApache ShenYu holds Apache top-level project status, which requires Apache Software Foundation governance. The repository had over 8,900 stars and 3,100 forks as of October 2026, with an active commit history. A Known Users page lists organizations that have voluntarily registered their production deployments.

Trade-offs

-Multi-container deployment setupA production ShenYu deployment requires two services running together: shenyu-admin and shenyu-bootstrap. Both containers need matching JWT and sync tokens configured at startup, and Admin requires a persistent database to replace its default H2 in-memory store before going to production. Teams expecting a single-container install will need to plan a multi-service setup.
-JVM resource footprintShenYu runs on the JVM, so each deployment node needs a Java runtime. Memory footprint and startup time are higher than gateway tools written in Go or Rust. Teams without Java expertise on the operations side may find JVM tuning (heap sizing, GC configuration) adds unfamiliar overhead, especially when co-locating Admin and the gateway on the same host.
-357 open issues on GitHubWith 357 open issues, some edge-case protocol configurations and plugin interactions may involve known bugs. Teams evaluating ShenYu for Dubbo, MQTT, or WASM plugin use should test their specific protocol stack in a staging environment before placing the gateway on a critical path.

versus alternatives

Shenyu vs alternatives#

ShenYu vs Kong Konnect

Kong Konnect combines a managed SaaS control plane with self-hosted runtime instances, offering a commercial plugin marketplace and usage-based pricing. Apache ShenYu is fully self-hosted, Apache-2.0-licensed, and built around Java-native protocol support.

Feature	Apache ShenYu	Kong Konnect
License	Apache-2.0	Proprietary (SaaS)
Self-hosting	Yes (Admin + bootstrap)	Hybrid (runtime self-hosted, control plane managed)
Dubbo/MQTT support	Yes (native)	No native support
Plugin system	Java, WASM, SPI	Lua and Go (Kong Hub)
Pricing	Free (self-hosted compute only)	Usage-based or per-node SaaS
Kubernetes controller	Yes	Yes

ShenYu is the better fit for Java and Dubbo shops that need full on-premises deployment and native RPC protocol routing. Its plugin chain handles Dubbo and MQTT without an additional commercial plugin or protocol tier. Kong Konnect is worth choosing when your stack is primarily HTTP/REST, you want a large commercial plugin marketplace, and you prefer a vendor-managed control plane over running your own Admin cluster.

ShenYu vs Apigee

Apigee (Google Cloud API Management) is an enterprise API lifecycle management platform oriented toward externally published APIs, developer portals, and Google Cloud analytics. Apache ShenYu focuses on internal microservice gateway governance, especially for Java-heavy stacks.

Feature	Apache ShenYu	Apigee
License	Apache-2.0	Proprietary
Self-hosting	Yes	No (managed cloud only)
Java/Dubbo routing	Yes	No native Dubbo support
Developer portal	No built-in	Yes
AI proxy support	Yes (AI proxy, MCP server)	Limited
Pricing	Free (self-hosted)	Google Cloud usage billing

ShenYu is the right choice when your goal is internal microservice governance across Java/Dubbo/gRPC backends, without Google Cloud billing or a managed-service dependency. Apigee is better suited when the goal is publishing a public API with a developer portal, API monetization, and deep Google Cloud analytics integration. For internal traffic routing across heterogeneous Java service backends, ShenYu covers the use case at no licensing cost.

install · quick start

Quick start#

bash

Self-hosting uses Docker to deploy the Admin server and gateway bootstrap container as two networked services.
```bash
docker network create shenyu
docker run -d --name shenyu-admin --network shenyu -p 9095:9095 apache/shenyu-admin:latest
docker run -d --name shenyu-bootstrap --network shenyu -p 9195:9195 -e SHENYU_SYNC_WEBSOCKET_URLS=ws://shenyu-admin:9095/websocket apache/shenyu-bootstrap:latest
```

tech stack · detected from GitHub

What it's built on#

Languages: Java

frequently asked

FAQ#

Is Apache ShenYu free to self-host commercially?

Yes. Apache ShenYu is licensed under Apache-2.0, which permits unrestricted commercial use, modification, and self-hosting with no fees. You pay only for the compute resources your Admin server and gateway bootstrap containers run on.

What protocols does Apache ShenYu support?

ShenYu natively supports HTTP/REST, Apache Dubbo, gRPC, WebSocket, and MQTT. TCP and optional SOFA and Tars proxy support are available via external plugin-store starters. This protocol range sets ShenYu apart from most open source gateways, which focus on HTTP and gRPC alone.

How does ShenYu compare to Kong Konnect?

Kong Konnect is a managed API gateway with usage-based pricing and a hosted control plane. ShenYu is Apache-2.0-licensed and fully self-hosted. ShenYu has stronger native support for Java/Dubbo backends and carries no per-call fees; Kong has a larger commercial plugin marketplace and an established managed-service track record. If you need a vendor-managed control plane, Kong is the better fit; if you need self-hosted Dubbo or MQTT routing with no subscription, ShenYu covers it.

Does ShenYu support Kubernetes?

Yes. An optional Kubernetes controller reconciles Ingress and Endpoints resources, so ShenYu can discover and route to services registered in Kubernetes without manual Admin configuration. You can also run shenyu-admin and shenyu-bootstrap as Kubernetes Deployments using their official Docker images.

How does ShenYu sync configuration across gateway replicas?

ShenYu Admin persists plugins, selectors, rules, and authentication data. Changes sync to gateway replicas using WebSocket by default. HTTP long polling, ZooKeeper, Nacos, and etcd are available as alternative sync transports for teams already running those coordination services.

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ShenYu vs Kong Konnect

Feature	Apache ShenYu	Kong Konnect
License	Apache-2.0	Proprietary (SaaS)
Self-hosting	Yes (Admin + bootstrap)	Hybrid (runtime self-hosted, control plane managed)
Dubbo/MQTT support	Yes (native)	No native support
Plugin system	Java, WASM, SPI	Lua and Go (Kong Hub)
Pricing	Free (self-hosted compute only)	Usage-based or per-node SaaS
Kubernetes controller	Yes	Yes

ShenYu vs Apigee

Feature	Apache ShenYu	Apigee
License	Apache-2.0	Proprietary
Self-hosting	Yes	No (managed cloud only)
Java/Dubbo routing	Yes	No native Dubbo support
Developer portal	No built-in	Yes
AI proxy support	Yes (AI proxy, MCP server)	Limited
Pricing	Free (self-hosted)	Google Cloud usage billing

Who Shenyu is for#

Java and Spring Cloud teams standardizing API governance

Skip if:

Platform engineers governing mixed-protocol backends

Skip if:

Organizations migrating off commercial API management platforms

Skip if:

Teams routing AI workloads through a multi-protocol gateway

Skip if:

The problem it solves#

How it solves it#

Multi-Protocol Proxy

Extensible Plugin Chain

Security and Traffic Control

ShenYu Admin Console

Observability and Alerting

AI Proxy and MCP Server

Strengths and trade-offs#

Strengths

Trade-offs

Shenyu vs alternatives#

ShenYu vs Kong Konnect

ShenYu vs Apigee

Quick start#

What it's built on#

FAQ#

Similar open-source tools#

Open source tools in these categories#

APIs & Integration

Backend Development

Cloud & Hosting

Security & Monitoring

Find open source alternatives to paid software

Who Shenyu is for#

Java and Spring Cloud teams standardizing API governance

Skip if:

Platform engineers governing mixed-protocol backends

Skip if:

Organizations migrating off commercial API management platforms

Skip if:

Teams routing AI workloads through a multi-protocol gateway

Skip if:

The problem it solves#

How it solves it#

Multi-Protocol Proxy

Extensible Plugin Chain

Security and Traffic Control

ShenYu Admin Console

Observability and Alerting

AI Proxy and MCP Server

Strengths and trade-offs#

Strengths

Trade-offs

Shenyu vs alternatives#

ShenYu vs Kong Konnect

ShenYu vs Apigee

Quick start#

What it's built on#

FAQ#

Similar open-source tools#

Open source tools in these categories#

APIs & Integration

Backend Development

Cloud & Hosting

Security & Monitoring

Find open source alternatives to paid software