Every free api gateway tier that clears our bar in 2026: 4 offers meet the criteria and 1 offer is demoted with a named reason. Recorded changes and a published ranking method. We could not confirm today's terms for 2 of them: on 1 the page we cite did not answer, and on 1 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.

Best Free API Gateway Tools

Every free api gateway tier that clears our bar today. Updated 2026-11-14.

4 offers meet our criteria for this category. Of those, 2 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, 1 a recorded widening, and we publish no durability signal for 1. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We withhold the class where the pricing page does not resolve or states no amount, tier or rate we can read, where we refused the last read, where the listing is gated, or where a narrowing in our records cites no source or no archived copy of the vendor's page has confirmed it. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page. They are listed in an order that rotates daily. Here is how that order is derived. There is no top slot here to sell.

Why trust this data? Every free tier is verified against the vendor's pricing page with dates tracked. We monitor 513 pricing changes and flag vendors that have reduced or removed free tiers. Rankings start every offer at zero and can only demote. There is no signal a vendor can acquire, lobby for, or buy — there is nothing to add. A record reaches a function page when its category names the function or when it carries a subtype label that names the function. Adding a label to a record publishes it here; removing one withdraws it. No page holds a list of vendors. See all 6 api gateway offers →

Tyk stable

Open Source

Open-source API gateway — self-hosted: free forever under MPL-2.0, includes rate limiting, auth, analytics. Cloud: 48-hour free trial only, paid plans usage-based. Dashboard and developer portal included

Recorded, but does not affect rank:

discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown — pricing restructured: The free tier information has been updated. An open-source option is still mentioned, the page now prominently features a 48-hour free trial of Tyk Cloud and three paid tiers: Core, Professional, and Enterprise. Source ↗

Full profile Alternatives tyk.io/pricing/ ↗

Unkey stable

Free

API key management. The "Free" plan is priced at 0 USD / mo and lists "1k API keys", "150K valid requests / mo", "7-day logs retention", "30-day audit log retention" and "Unlimited APIs".

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare www.unkey.com/pricing ↗

Hookdeck stable

Developer

Event gateway — 10K events/month, 100K discarded requests, 3-day retention, 5 events/sec throughput. SOC2 compliant

Full profile Alternatives hookdeck.com/pricing ↗

Zuplo

Free

Free tier includes 100K requests / month. Custom domains are $25/mo for 2 domains (max).

Recorded, but does not affect rank:

discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown — limits reduced: The free tier now has a limit of 100K requests/month, not 1M. The free tier also does not include custom domains. Source ↗

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare zuplo.com/pricing ↗

Demoted — and exactly why

These offers reach this page too and rank below the list above. Each one names the recorded fact behind it. A recorded limit reduction, pricing restructure or new restriction is shown on every surface where the offer appears, with its date and summary — but it does not move rank. We have change records for only 16% of vendors, and disproportionately for well-known ones, so ranking on them would demote the vendors we happen to watch most closely.

−1

Kong

OSS

Kong Gateway is an open-source API, LLM and MCP gateway under Apache 2.0. It is self-hosted with no request or usage limits and includes the Kong Manager web UI. Kong Konnect is a separate hosted platform with a free trial and per-gateway paid plans. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-08, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 1 consecutive re-check attempt has failed (most recently 2026-10-08 — the page names Kong but states no amount, tier or rate we can read, and its markup carries no structured data), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare github.com/Kong/kong ↗

Not on our ranked list

One of the 6 offers matching this query is not on our ranked list — 1 is not a free offer. Here is how that order is derived.

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.

date: 2026-11-14
query_key: best-of:API Gateway
seed: f1d9b166c3c89aa754bf08229f5a7cdac9caa6c4c6ef11bc3d015cc609dd024d
tie_count: 4

Quick Comparison

Vendor	Free Tier	Key Limits	Durability	Read / catalogue date
Tyk	Open Source	Open-source API gateway — self-hosted: free forever under MPL-2.0, includes rate limiting, auth, analytics. Cloud: 48-ho...	stable	2026-11-11
Unkey	Free	API key management. The "Free" plan is priced at 0 USD / mo and lists "1k API keys", "150K valid requests / mo", "7-day ... read found the page different · 2026-11-08	improving effective 2026-11-05	2026-11-08 / 2026-10-18
Hookdeck	Developer	Event gateway — 10K events/month, 100K discarded requests, 3-day retention, 5 events/sec throughput. SOC2 compliant	stable	2026-11-08
Zuplo	Free	Free tier includes 100K requests / month. Custom domains are $25/mo for 2 domains (max).	—	2026-11-08 / 2026-10-18

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free api gateway tool in 2026?

We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 4 free api gateway offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

Which of these free api gateway tiers have held their terms?

4 offers meet our criteria for this category. Of those, 2 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, 1 a recorded widening, and we publish no durability signal for 1. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We withhold the class where the pricing page does not resolve or states no amount, tier or rate we can read, where we refused the last read, where the listing is gated, or where a narrowing in our records cites no source or no archived copy of the vendor's page has confirmed it. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.

More Best-Of Lists

Dev Utilities Design AI / ML Cloud Hosting Monitoring Email Storage Security Project Management Databases