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Tyk API Gateway

Tyk Gateway is the cloud-native, open source, enterprise-ready API and AI Gateway supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP, gRPC and MCP (Model Context Protocol).

Built from the ground up, as the fastest API Gateway on the planet since 2014.

Tyk Gateway is provided ‘Batteries-included’, with no feature lockout. Enabling your organization to rate limit, auth, gather analytics, apply microservice patterns and more with ease.

There are three different ways you can try Tyk:

Everything you need to manage APIs using Tyk Open Source. Follow the simple Get Started guide below 👇

The Enterprise API Management platform: Management Control Plane with GUI & Developer Portal. Tyk Self Managed

The Enterprise API Management SaaS platform: hosted Management Control Plane with GUI & Developer Portal. Tyk Cloud

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Getting Started

Tyk Cloud is the easiest way to set up Tyk. Tyk hosts and manages the full stack for you, so you do not install anything. You can sign up for a free trial of Tyk Cloud and get started in minutes. If not, you can follow the instructions below to get started with Tyk on your own infrastructure.

Run the open source Tyk Gateway with Docker in under 2 minutes. You need Docker and Docker Compose.

Follow the Tyk Open Source Gateway quick start. It shows you how to:

1. Create a Gateway configuration file (tyk.conf).
2. On Linux, create an apps folder where the Gateway saves your APIs.
3. Create a Docker Compose file that runs Tyk Gateway and Redis.
4. Start the Gateway with docker compose up -d.

Confirm that the Gateway runs. Send a request to the hello endpoint:

curl localhost:8080/hello

Output:

{"status":"pass","version":"5.x.x","description":"Tyk GW"}

Next, create your first API with the Tyk Gateway API.

Try full API Management Lifecycle

To evaluate the enterprise API management platform on your infrastructure, use Tyk Install. It runs Tyk Gateway, Tyk Dashboard, the Developer Portal, Tyk Pump, Redis and PostgreSQL with Docker Compose, and preloads sample APIs and policies. You need a licence. To get one, request a Tyk Self-Managed trial.

git clone https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk-install
cd tyk-install/docker/self-managed
cp .env.example .env   # add your licence keys to .env
cd ../getting-started
bash start.sh

For the full steps, see the Tyk Self-Managed quick start.

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Other Installations are available:

1. Docker
2. Kubernetes with Helm (tyk-oss chart from Tyk Charts)
3. Ansible
4. Red Hat and CentOS
5. Ubuntu
6. Compile Tyk from Source

Getting started with AI Gateway for LLM and MCP

Tyk Gateway governs MCP traffic from AI agents, applying authentication, rate limiting and per-tool access control to every JSON-RPC call. Tyk AI Studio handles LLM management, with model routing, budgets and guardrails across providers. Start at the AI management overview.

Open Source API Gateway Features

Use any protocol: REST (with native OpenAPI support), SOAP, GraphQL, gRPC, TCP, and MCP.

MCP Gateway: Put the gateway in front of remote Model Context Protocol servers so AI agent traffic is authenticated, rate limited and auditable. Tyk parses JSON-RPC 2.0 and applies policy per tool, resource and prompt rather than treating MCP as opaque HTTP.

API to MCP: Generate an MCP proxy directly from a REST API in Tyk Gateway, without building or hosting a separate MCP server.

Industry Standard Authentication: JWT, bearer Tokens, Basic Auth, Client Certificates and more.

Open API Standards: Import your Swagger and OpenAPI Documents (OAS 2.X and OAS 3.0.1) to scaffold APIs in Tyk.

Ultra performant: Low latency, and thousands of rps with just a single CPU, horizontally and vertically scalable.

Content mediation: Transform all the things, from request or response headers to converting between SOAP and GraphQL.

Extensible Plugin Architecture: Customize Tyk’s middleware chain by writing plugins in your language of choice - from Python to Javascript to Go, or any language which supports gRPC.

Rate Limiting & Quotas: Protect your upstreams from becoming overloaded and/or apply limits for each consumer.

API Versioning - API Versions can be easily set and sunset (deprecated) at a specific time and date.

Granular Access Control - Grant access to one or more APIs on a per version and operation basis.

Blocklist/Allowlist/Ignore endpoint access - Enforce strict security models on a version-by-version basis to your access points.

Analytics logging - Record detailed usage data on who is using your APIs (raw data only)

CORS - Enable CORS for certain APIs so users can make browser-based requests

Webhooks - Trigger webhooks against events such as Quota Violations and Authentication failures

IP AllowListing - Block access to non-trusted IP addresses for more secure interactions

Hitless reloads - Tyk configurations can be altered dynamically and the service restarted without affecting any active request

Kubernetes native declarative API: using Tyk Operator (requires a licence)

Tyk Technologies uses the same API Gateway for all it’s applications. Protecting, securing, and processing APIs for thousands of organizations and businesses around the world. Ideal for Open Banking, building software in the clouds as well as exposing APIs to teams, partners & consumers.

Tyk OSS Integrations

Tyk Technologies maintains other Open Source Software which can be used in conjunction with Tyk API Gateway:

Tyk AI Studio - Open source (AGPL-3.0) AI management platform for LLM traffic: model routing, budgets and cost controls, RAG data sources, tools and agents, with governance across providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Hugging Face and Ollama. Use it alongside Tyk Gateway when you need LLM and AI management rather than MCP proxying. Docs

Tyk Pump - Pluggable analytics purger to move Analytics generated by your Tyk nodes to any back-end.

Tyk Identity Broker - Tyk Authentication Proxy for third-party login

Tyk Mserv - Asset Server and gRPC host

Documentation

All the documentation for Tyk Gateway and other OSS-related topics can be found at https://tyk.io/docs/tyk-open-source

Community

• Tyk Community Board - Technical support from the Tyk Community
• Write a GitHub Issue - Feature requests & bug reports welcome
• Technical blog - Tyk announcements and updates
• Newsletter - Subscribe to the Tyk newsletter
• If you are using Tyk give us a star ⭐️

Licensing

Tyk is dual-licensed:

1. Open Source License: The code in the root directory and all subdirectories except the 'ee' folder is released under the MPL v2.0. Please see LICENSE for the full version of the open source license.

2. Commercial License: The code in the 'ee' folder is subject to a commercial license. For more information about obtaining a commercial license, please contact our sales team at sales@tyk.io.

Compiling Tyk Gateway

Compile from Source

git clone https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk
go build

Use the Go version in go.mod to build master, the current development version. Tyk is officially supported on Linux/amd64, Linux/i386 and Linux/arm64.

To run tests locally use the following command:

go test ./...

Note that tests require Redis to be running on the same machine (default port).

To write your own test please use this guide https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk/blob/master/TESTING.md

Contributing

For more information about contributing PRs and issues, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

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