api7.ai: A Fully Open-Source AI Gateway for Scalable, Secure API Management

api7.ai is a powerful, fully open-source API management framework built on Apache APISIX, designed to streamline the deployment, orchestration, and security of APIs—especially for AI agents and large language models (LLMs). With a focus on efficiency, reliability, and compliance, it offers a comprehensive suite of tools including API7 Gateway, API7 AI Gateway, and API7 API Portal, enabling seamless integration across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. Ideal for developers, enterprises, and tech teams managing complex API ecosystems, api7.ai supports advanced AI-specific features like multi-LLM load balancing, token-based rate limiting, TTFT optimization, AI RAG, prompt decoration, content moderation, and detailed observability. Its robust plugin system—over 100 open-source and commercial plugins—covers request transformation, security, serverless functions, and monitoring, all while maintaining high performance with up to 18K QPS per CPU core and 0.2ms latency. The platform also supports a wide range of protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket, gRPC, GraphQL, MQTT, and custom ones, and integrates with industry-standard tools like Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, Keycloak, Okta, and OAuth. With enterprise-grade capabilities such as FIPS compliance, multi-cluster management, canary releases, blue-green deployments, and circuit breaking, api7.ai powers mission-critical systems for global organizations in AI, automotive, gaming, payments, and Web3. It also includes a developer portal for API publishing with documentation, analytics, and rate-limiting controls. The platform supports GitOps workflows via Admin API and declarative CLI, ensuring smooth, automated deployments.

Key Features:

• Fully open-source AI gateway for AI agents and LLMs
• Unified management of north-south and east-west traffic
• Support for L7 and L4 protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket, QUIC, MQTT, GraphQL, gRPC, and custom protocols
• Multi-LLM load balancing across providers (OpenAI, DeepSeek, Claude, Mistral, Gemini, and more)
• Token-based rate limiting (single-node and cluster-level)
• TTFT (Time To First Token) optimization for faster LLM responses
• Canary release and blue-green deployment for safe updates
• Circuit breaking and health checks for system resilience
• Fine-grained routing and request transformation
• AI RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) support
• Prompt decoration and content moderation for safer AI outputs
• Logging and auditing for compliance and traceability
• Integration with 100+ open-source projects and SaaS platforms
• GitOps and DevOps integration via Admin API and declarative CLI
• Support for OpenAPI and Gateway API standards
• Protocol transcoding (e.g., REST to SOAP)
• Multi-cluster and global network management with data compliance controls
• Authentication with RBAC, Keycloak, OAuth, Okta, 2FA, JWT, SAML, HMAC, LDAP, and Forward Auth
• Serverless integration with Pure Lua, Azure Functions, Amazon Lambda, and Apache OpenWhisk
• FIPS compliance for regulated and government use
• Developer Portal for API publishing, documentation, and analytics
• Observability with Datadog, Prometheus, and Grafana
• Flexible scaling across bare metal, VMs, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms
• 99.9% SLA for control plane reliability
• 24/7 premium support and onboarding with direct access to APISIX core developers
• Support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments

Pricing: api7.ai offers a flexible pricing model with a Standard plan starting at $250 per month for the API7 Cloud, based on gateway groups and control plane regions. A Premium plan includes 1-on-1 solution design, implementation assistance, architecture reviews, performance optimization, and 24/7 technical support. Custom enterprise pricing is available for API7 Enterprise Edition, which is tailored for large-scale API lifecycle management. While the core AI Gateway is open-source and free to use, paid plans provide managed services, advanced support, and enterprise features. The platform also offers a free trial via the '1 Hour Meeting' scheduling option on the Contact page.

Conclusion: api7.ai stands out as a robust, open-source-driven solution for modern API and AI gateway management, combining cutting-edge performance with enterprise-grade security and scalability—perfect for developers and organizations building next-generation AI-powered applications.