# Higress

> Open-source AI gateway for routing, securing and observing traffic to LLM APIs, MCP servers and inference workloads.

Higress is an open-source AI gateway, hosted as a CNCF Sandbox project, that sits between applications and large language models. Higress gives one calling interface for many model providers and adds fallback, content filtering, caching and token quotas. Developers deploy Higress locally with Docker or use the managed cloud edition on Alibaba Cloud.

**Best for:** Engineering teams that call several model providers or expose MCP tools and need central routing, quotas and security.

- Official site: https://higress.ai/en
- Listed in: [Developer API](https://trendhub.net/ai-tools/category/developer-api), [DevOps & Monitoring](https://trendhub.net/ai-tools/category/devops-monitoring)
- Last checked: 2026-10-09 (facts taken from higress.ai)
- Source page: https://trendhub.net/ai-tools/higress-open-source-ai-gateway-llm-apis

## Key facts

- Platforms: API
- Pricing model: Free
- Free plan: Yes
- API: Yes

## What is Higress?

Higress is an open-source AI gateway built on Istio and Envoy and maintained as a Sandbox project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It handles three kinds of AI traffic through one entry point: calls to model APIs, requests to MCP tools and inference workloads running on Kubernetes. For model access it converts between the protocols of more than a hundred common models, so applications use a single request format, and it can fall back to another model when one fails. Further gateway functions include content safety checks on prompts and responses, exact and semantic caching of results, and counting of tokens per consumer with limits. Existing services can be exposed as MCP servers, and behaviour is extended with Wasm plugins. A commercial, fully managed edition is offered as Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway.

## Key features

- **Unified Model Access**: Translates one request format to the protocols of 100+ models and supports model-level fallback.
- **MCP Server Hosting**: Receives MCP requests and adds authentication, traffic scheduling, parameter mapping and audit to existing services.
- **Content Safety**: Filters data sent to external models and screens output returned to users.
- **Result Caching**: Stores exact and semantically similar answers to cut token use and latency on repeated questions.
- **Token Quotas**: Tracks token consumption per consumer and restricts callers that exceed their allowance.
- **Wasm Plugins**: Extends the gateway with plugins, including many ready-made ones from the community.

## Use cases

- **Multi-Provider Routing**: A platform team puts OpenAI, Claude and local models behind one internal endpoint.
- **Turning APIs into MCP Tools**: A company publishes existing HTTP services as MCP servers for its agents.
- **Cost Control**: An administrator sets token limits per team and reviews usage data.
- **Prompt and Output Screening**: A security engineer adds safety checks without changing application code.
- **Local Evaluation**: A developer runs the gateway in Docker to test features in a few minutes.

## Things to know

- **Two editions**: The open-source gateway is self-managed, while Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway is a managed commercial service with serverless and enterprise tiers.
- **Cloud pricing in yuan**: The managed serverless tier is advertised with usage-based billing quoted in Chinese yuan.
- **Documentation license**: The project's documentation is distributed under CC-BY-4.0.

## FAQs

### What is Higress?

Higress is an open-source AI gateway that manages traffic between applications and LLM APIs, AI agents and MCP servers.

### Is Higress free?

Yes. Higress is open source and free to deploy yourself; a separate commercial cloud edition is sold through Alibaba Cloud.

### How do I try Higress?

Higress can be started locally with a one-click Docker deployment that requires no signup, and the site says core features can be verified in about five minutes.

### Which models does Higress support?

Higress states that it performs unified protocol conversion for more than 100 common models, including OpenAI, Claude and locally hosted LLMs.

### Does Higress support MCP?

Yes. Higress can host MCP servers and convert existing services into them, handling authentication and traffic control at the gateway.

### Who is behind Higress?

Higress is a Sandbox project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF); its commercial edition is offered on Alibaba Cloud.

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Source: https://trendhub.net/ai-tools/higress-open-source-ai-gateway-llm-apis (trendhub)