1 year ago

In just about every conversation on ingress controllers and service meshes, we hear some variation of the questions, “How is this tool different from an API gateway?” Some vendors position their API gateway tool as an alternative to using an ingress controller or service mesh — or they roll multiple capabilities into one tool.

At their cores, API gateways, ingress controllers and service meshes are each a type of proxy, designed to get traffic into and around your environments.

But we hear you saying, “My API gateway tool has so many more features than my ingress controller (or service mesh). Aren’t I missing out?”

Though most API gateway use cases for Kubernetes can (and should) be addressed by an ingress controller or a service mesh, there are some specialized situations where an API gateway tool is suitable.