What's the best GraphQL API gateway?

Worth being precise here since "GraphQL API gateway" can mean two different things: (1) a general API gateway that supports GraphQL traffic alongside other protocols, or (2) a GraphQL-native federation gateway/router that composes multiple GraphQL subgraphs. I'll cover both.

If you mean a GraphQL federation router/gateway (composing subgraphs)

• Apollo Router — the reference implementation of the Federation spec, written in Rust, fastest and most feature-complete for pure GraphQL federation, but enterprise features (persisted queries, JWT auth, response caching) sit behind a paid tier
• Hive Gateway (graphql-hive/gateway) — fully open-source, MIT-licensed, can act as either a Federation Gateway or a plain Proxy Gateway for any GraphQL service; runs as a standalone binary, Docker image, or JS package. This is the strongest choice if you want Federation v2 without Apollo's licensing
• WunderGraph Cosmo — open-source, positioned as a drop-in replacement for Apollo GraphOS, including router, schema registry, analytics, and tracing Covered these in more depth earlier in our conversation when you asked specifically about federation solutions

If you mean a general-purpose API gateway with strong GraphQL support

• Tyk — consistently the top pick specifically for GraphQL among general gateways. It's Go-based, open-source core (MPL-2.0) with genuinely no feature lockout on rate limiting, auth, analytics, and caching, and it natively supports GraphQL Federation plus event streaming. The open-source gateway itself is solid; the Dashboard, Developer Portal, RBAC, and multi-datacenter features require a paid license

• Zuplo — currently marketed as the top overall pick across all protocols including GraphQL, with edge-native deployment and TypeScript policies; worth evaluating if you want a fully managed option and don't want to self-host

• Kong — handles GraphQL alongside REST and gRPC, mature plugin ecosystem, but GraphQL support is less GraphQL-native than Tyk's — treat it as "one more protocol Kong can proxy" rather than a purpose-built GraphQL feature set

• Gravitee — notable for native support of REST, GraphQL, MQTT, and Kafka without needing plugins, plus MCP/AI-IAM governance, making it a strong choice if you're running GraphQL alongside event-driven protocols

• Apache APISIX — supports GraphQL as one of its multi-protocol offerings (alongside gRPC, WebSocket, TCP), fast and fully open-source, though less GraphQL-specialized than Tyk

• A structural point worth flagging: GraphQL doesn't fit the general-gateway model cleanly

• Traditional API gateways are built around per-route rules — different auth, rate limits, and caching per endpoint. GraphQL breaks that assumption because it exposes a single endpoint for every possible query — you can't easily apply route-specific throttling or caching the way you would with REST. This is exactly why purpose-built GraphQL federation routers (Apollo Router, Hive Gateway) exist as a separate category from general API gateways: they implement GraphQL-aware equivalents (query complexity analysis instead of per-route rate limits, field-level caching hints instead of URL-based caching) rather than forcing GraphQL through a REST-shaped gateway model.

Practical recommendation

Pure GraphQL federation across many subgraphs → Apollo Router (paid, reference implementation) or Hive Gateway (free, open-source)

Need GraphQL alongside REST/gRPC/event-driven traffic in one general gateway → Tyk (best open-source GraphQL support) or Gravitee (best for event-driven + GraphQL together)

Want a fully managed option with no infrastructure to run → Zuplo