Apache APISIXvsFastRouter.ai

Pros

• The gateway delivers exceptional performance, achieving approximately 18,000 QPS (queries per second) per core with only 0.2 ms added latency—significantly outpacing older gateways that typically deliver around 1,700 QPS with 2 ms latency .
• It is a fully dynamic system that supports hot plugin reloading and real-time configuration updates without restarts, which minimizes downtime and enables rapid iteration on routing rules .
• The platform has both a rich plugin ecosystem with over 100 open-source plugins and now acts as an AI gateway, supporting proxy, security, and governance for traffic to 20+ LLM providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and AWS Bedrock .

Cons

• While the gateway itself is open-source, some advanced features and enterprise support require a commercial subscription from API7.ai, which can add to the total cost of ownership .
• The platform is very powerful but has a learning curve, particularly for operators not familiar with Lua for plugin development or etcd for distributed configuration management .
• As with any complex gateway, ensuring secure and optimal configuration across hundreds of plugins and routes requires significant operational expertise, especially for large-scale production deployments .

Pros

Cons