Side by side

Envoy Gateway vs NGINX Gateway Fabric

Both stand on kubernetes ingress controllers. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

Envoy Gateway

Free plan APISelf-hosted

Envoy Gateway combines gateway configuration, traffic controls, and security features around Envoy Proxy. Check the release caveat and Kubernetes prerequisite when planning an installation.

Visit Envoy Gateway

NGINX Gateway Fabric offers a free, self-hosted path to Kubernetes Gateway API traffic management with a wide set of documented routing and security options. Check the compatibility table before relying on a particular resource or field.

Visit NGINX Gateway Fabric

The facts

	Envoy Gateway	NGINX Gateway Fabric
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Self-hosted	Linux, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Free or on request
Plans published	1	1
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	gateway.envoyproxy.io	docs.nginx.com
On kubernetes ingress controllers	#8 of 28	#15 of 28

Envoy Gateway: what it does well

Supports standalone and Kubernetes deployments.
Offers rate limiting, retries, circuit breaking, and failover.
Includes mTLS, OIDC, JWT, and API-key controls.
Lists metrics, access logging, and distributed tracing.

What to know first

Quickstart requires a Kubernetes cluster.
Latest release might not be stable.

NGINX Gateway Fabric: what it does well

Free open-source NGINX data-plane plan
Supports HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2, gRPC, TCP, TLS, and UDP
Includes documented rate limiting and request transformations
Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry integrations are documented
Images support amd64 and arm64

What to know first

Requires Kubernetes 1.32 or later for version 2.7.2
Gateway API resource support varies
Gateway API resources must be installed before deployment
Some resources or fields are unsupported

Alternatives to Envoy Gateway Alternatives to NGINX Gateway Fabric The whole list