Zuplo vs Gravitee: Managed Edge Gateway vs Open-Source API Management Comparison

Zuplo and Gravitee represent two fundamentally different approaches to API management. Zuplo is a fully managed, edge-native API gateway that deploys to 300+ global data centers with zero infrastructure to manage. Gravitee is an open-source API management platform built on a Java-based, event-native architecture that supports both synchronous and asynchronous APIs.

If you are evaluating these platforms, the decision comes down to what your team values most: operational simplicity with global edge performance, or full-lifecycle API management with self-hosted control. Here is how they compare:

• Architecture: Zuplo runs on a globally distributed edge network with requests processed at the nearest point of presence. Gravitee is a Java-based platform that requires MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and JVM infrastructure for self-hosted deployments.
• Developer experience: Zuplo uses TypeScript policies with native GitOps workflows. Gravitee uses a Java-based policy engine with a management console UI.
• Operations: Zuplo is fully managed with zero infrastructure to operate. Gravitee self-hosted requires managing four separate components (gateway, management API, console, developer portal) plus their databases.
• Pricing: Zuplo offers a free tier and transparent pricing starting at $25/month. Gravitee’s managed plans start at $2,500/month per gateway, with the open-source edition requiring infrastructure investment.
• Deployment speed: Zuplo deploys globally in under 20 seconds. Gravitee self-hosted deployments require significant setup time depending on the environment.

In this guide:

• Architecture comparison
• Developer experience
• Deployment and operations
• Pricing and total cost of ownership
• Performance and global distribution
• API management scope
• When to choose Gravitee
• When to choose Zuplo
• Migrating from Gravitee to Zuplo
• FAQ

Feature comparison at a glance

Architecture comparison

Zuplo: edge-native and fully managed

Zuplo is built from the ground up as an edge-native API gateway. Every API request is processed at the nearest of 300+ global points of presence, not routed to a central data center. Authentication, rate limiting, request transformation, and custom business logic all execute at the edge.

Zuplo offers two deployment models, both fully managed:

• Managed Edge (default): Deploys to 300+ data centers worldwide. Zero infrastructure to manage. Deployments propagate globally in under 20 seconds.
• Managed Dedicated: A dedicated, isolated instance on the cloud provider of your choice (AWS, Azure, GCP, Akamai, Equinix, and others). You choose the regions. Private networking is supported for both inbound and outbound connections.

Both models provide the same features, policies, and APIs. Your code and configuration work identically on either deployment option.

Gravitee: Java-based, event-native platform

Gravitee APIM is a Java-based platform consisting of four main components:

• APIM Gateway: The core reverse proxy that handles API traffic
• Management API: A RESTful API that exposes services for managing the platform
• APIM Console: A web UI for API publishers and administrators
• Developer Portal: A web UI for API consumers

For self-hosted deployments, these components require supporting infrastructure:

• MongoDB for configuration and management data (tested versions: 4.4.x through 8.0.x)
• Elasticsearch (7.17.x, 8.x, or 9.x) or OpenSearch for analytics, logs, and reporting
• Redis (optional) for rate limiting counters and caching
• Java 21 (required for the latest Gravitee versions) runtime environment
• Nginx as a reverse proxy for the console and portal UIs

Gravitee also offers a managed cloud option (Gravitee Cloud) starting at $2,500/month per gateway, and a hybrid architecture where the management plane runs in Gravitee Cloud while gateways run on your infrastructure.

Gravitee’s event-native architecture is a genuine differentiator. It supports asynchronous protocols including Kafka, MQTT, Solace, RabbitMQ, and WebSockets natively, with protocol mediation between HTTP and streaming protocols. If your primary use case involves event-driven APIs, this is a capability Zuplo does not match — Zuplo is focused on HTTP/REST API gateway use cases.

Developer experience

Configuration and policy language

Zuplo is TypeScript-native. Routes are defined in an OpenAPI spec file, and policies are configured as JSON with TypeScript for custom logic. A rate limiting policy in Zuplo looks like this:

{
  "name": "rate-limit-inbound",
  "policyType": "rate-limit-inbound",
  "handler": {
    "export": "RateLimitInboundPolicy",
    "module": "$import(@zuplo/runtime)",
    "options": {
      "rateLimitBy": "user",
      "requestsAllowed": 100,
      "timeWindowMinutes": 1
    }
  }
}

Custom policies use standard TypeScript with access to the full npm ecosystem, standard web APIs (Request, Response, fetch), and can be tested with standard JavaScript testing tools.

Gravitee uses a policy studio in its APIM Console for configuring policies, along with over 50 pre-built policies for traffic shaping, authentication, rate limiting, and more. Custom policies are written in Java and packaged as plugins. For teams already fluent in Java, this works well. For teams that are not, writing and deploying Java plugins introduces a steeper learning curve compared to TypeScript.

GitOps and deployment workflows

Zuplo is GitOps-native. All configuration — routes, policies, custom handlers, and environment variables — lives as text files in your Git repository. Push to main and the gateway updates globally. Open a pull request and get a preview environment automatically with its own URL. Rollback is a git revert. This is not an add-on; it is the core deployment model.

Gravitee supports GitOps through its management API and has added CI/CD integration capabilities. However, the primary workflow centers on the APIM Console UI. Achieving a fully GitOps-driven workflow with Gravitee requires more custom tooling and pipeline configuration compared to Zuplo’s out-of-the-box approach.

Developer portal

Zuplo’s developer portal is automatically generated from your OpenAPI spec. It includes interactive API documentation, self-serve API key management, and built-in authentication with any OIDC provider. The portal is built on Zudoku, an open-source framework, and can be customized with CSS, Markdown, and React components. It updates every time you deploy.

Gravitee’s developer portal is a separate component that requires configuration and deployment alongside the gateway. It supports API discovery, subscription management, and documentation. Gravitee’s portal offers extensive customization options, but it requires more setup effort to get running compared to Zuplo’s auto-generated approach.

Deployment and operations

This is where the platforms diverge most sharply. The operational requirements are fundamentally different.

Zuplo: zero infrastructure

With Zuplo, your operational responsibilities are:

• Define routes, policies, and custom logic as code in Git
• Manage branches, pull requests, and code reviews
• Set environment variables and secrets

Everything else — infrastructure, scaling, global distribution, high availability, patching, monitoring, TLS certificates — is handled by the platform. Deployments propagate to 300+ edge locations in under 20 seconds.

Gravitee self-hosted: significant operational overhead

Running Gravitee self-hosted means your team manages:

• Four application components: Gateway, management API, console, and developer portal — each deployed and scaled independently
• Two databases: MongoDB for configuration data, Elasticsearch for analytics
• JVM tuning: Java garbage collection, heap sizing, and performance optimization
• High availability: Multi-node clusters across availability zones with failover configuration
• Upgrades: Coordinated upgrades across all components and databases, including Java version migrations as new Gravitee releases require newer JDKs
• Monitoring and alerting: Health checks, dashboards, and on-call rotations for the entire stack

Gravitee’s documentation recommends a minimum of t2.medium instances (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM) with 40 GB disk for each component. A production deployment with high availability requires multiple instances of each component.

Gravitee Cloud: managed but expensive

Gravitee Cloud eliminates the self-hosted operational burden but starts at $2,500/month per gateway. Enterprise features like async API support, hybrid deployments, alerting, and enterprise SSO are only available in the Enterprise Edition, which requires custom pricing through a sales conversation.

Pricing and total cost of ownership

Zuplo pricing

Zuplo offers transparent, published pricing:

• Free: $0/month — 100K requests, unlimited environments, API keys, and developer portals
• Builder: $25/month — 100K requests included, scales to 1M with additional usage charges, custom domains
• Enterprise: Starting at $1,000/month on annual contract — unlimited requests, up to 99.999% SLA, SSO, observability integrations, premium support

All plans include the developer portal, API key management, rate limiting, and global edge distribution.

Gravitee pricing

Gravitee has three pricing paths:

• Community Edition (OSS): Free software, but you pay for infrastructure. Production infrastructure costs typically run $200–$500/month for compute alone, plus engineering time for ongoing operations. Many enterprise features (async API support, hybrid deployments, alert engine, enterprise SSO) are not available in the community edition.
• Starter (Managed): $2,500/month per gateway
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, reportedly up to $30,000/month based on third-party listings

TCO comparison

For a team handling moderate API traffic, here is a realistic cost comparison:

Gravitee self-hosted (Community Edition)

• Software license: $0
• Compute (gateway + management API + databases, multi-AZ): ~$400–$600/month
• Elasticsearch cluster: ~$200–$400/month
• Monitoring and logging: ~$200–$400/month
• DevOps engineer time (15+ hrs/month): ~$1,200–$1,500/month
• Estimated monthly TCO: $2,000–$2,900/month

Gravitee Cloud (Starter)

• Managed gateway: $2,500/month
• Limited to starter features; enterprise capabilities cost more
• Estimated monthly TCO: $2,500+/month

Zuplo (Enterprise)

• Platform subscription: from $1,000/month (annual contract)
• Includes global edge distribution, developer portal, API key management, analytics, GitOps deployment
• No infrastructure costs, no DevOps overhead
• Estimated monthly TCO: from $1,000/month

Zuplo consolidates gateway, developer portal, API key management, analytics, and CI/CD deployment into a single predictable cost. For a deeper analysis of managed versus self-hosted economics, see our managed vs self-hosted API gateway comparison.

Performance and global distribution

Zuplo

Requests are processed at the nearest edge location, typically within 50ms of the end user regardless of geographic location. Rate limiting is enforced globally across all edge locations as a single zone, so consumers cannot bypass limits by routing through different regions. No configuration is required for multi-region deployment — it is automatic.

Gravitee

Performance depends on your deployment topology. Self-hosted Gravitee runs in the data centers you deploy to. Users far from those data centers pay a round-trip latency penalty on every request. Achieving global distribution requires deploying and managing multiple Gravitee clusters across regions with your own routing and load balancing.

Gravitee’s published benchmarks show strong throughput — 80,800 RPS with API key validation and 61,800 RPS with rate limiting at under 7ms latency — but these numbers reflect a single-cluster, optimized test environment, not a globally distributed deployment.

API management scope

Where Gravitee is broader

Gravitee positions itself as a full-lifecycle API management platform covering design, deploy, manage, and monitor. Key capabilities that extend beyond Zuplo’s scope:

• Event-native gateway: Native support for Kafka, MQTT, Solace, RabbitMQ, and other async protocols (Enterprise Edition)
• Protocol mediation: Translating between HTTP and streaming protocols through a single gateway
• Access Management: Gravitee includes a separate Access Management product for identity, MFA, and user management
• API Designer: A visual, drag-and-drop tool for designing APIs
• Gravitee Cockpit: Centralized management of multiple Gravitee installations across environments

Where Zuplo is stronger

Zuplo focuses on being the best API gateway and developer portal platform rather than covering the full lifecycle:

• Edge-native performance: Global distribution at 300+ locations is automatic, not an infrastructure project
• Developer experience: TypeScript, GitOps, and preview environments are built-in, not bolted on
• API monetization: Built-in metering, quota enforcement, and Stripe billing integration at the gateway level. No external metering services or webhook chains.
• AI gateway capabilities: Auto-generated MCP servers from OpenAPI specs, centralized MCP Gateway, model routing to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other providers, plus real-time token usage and cost tracking
• Time-to-value: Minutes from signup to a production-grade, globally distributed gateway

When to choose Gravitee

Gravitee may be the better choice if:

• Event-driven APIs are your primary use case: If you need native Kafka, MQTT, or Solace support with gateway-level policy enforcement, Gravitee’s event-native architecture is purpose-built for this
• You need full lifecycle API management in one platform: If you want API design, gateway, portal, access management, and monitoring from a single vendor
• You have a platform engineering team: If you have dedicated DevOps resources to manage Java infrastructure, databases, and multi-component deployments
• Self-hosted is a hard requirement: If compliance or regulatory requirements mandate fully on-premises deployment with no external dependencies, Gravitee’s open-source edition gives you complete control (note: Zuplo also offers managed dedicated and self-hosted options on enterprise plans)
• Open-source is important to your organization: If your team or procurement process requires open-source software

When to choose Zuplo

Zuplo is the better choice if:

• You want zero operational overhead: No servers, databases, JVMs, or infrastructure to manage — ever
• Global edge performance matters: Your API consumers are distributed globally and latency at the gateway layer matters
• Your team prefers TypeScript over Java: Modern, widely-known language with access to the npm ecosystem for custom policies
• You value GitOps workflows: All configuration in Git with automatic preview environments for every pull request
• You need a developer portal without a project: Auto-generated from your OpenAPI spec, not a separate component to deploy and manage
• You want built-in API monetization: Metering, billing, and quota enforcement integrated at the gateway without external services
• Transparent pricing matters: Published pricing without enterprise-minimum contracts or sales-gated tiers for core features
• Time-to-value is critical: Go from zero to a production-grade, globally distributed API gateway in minutes, not days or weeks

Migrating from Gravitee to Zuplo

If you are considering a move from Gravitee to Zuplo:

1. Import your OpenAPI specs: Zuplo is OpenAPI-native. Import your existing API definitions and routes are created automatically.
2. Translate policies: Gravitee’s built-in policies map to Zuplo’s policy library. Custom Java policies can be rewritten as TypeScript policies using Zuplo’s policy framework.
3. Developer portal: Your OpenAPI spec generates a developer portal automatically. No separate portal component to configure.
4. API keys: Zuplo’s built-in API key management system includes self-serve key provisioning, global edge validation at 300+ data centers, and leak detection through GitHub secret scanning integration.

For a full feature-by-feature comparison, see the Zuplo vs Gravitee comparison page.

FAQ

Is Gravitee open source?

Gravitee offers a Community Edition that is open source and free to use. However, many features that teams need at scale — including async/event-native API support, hybrid bridge gateways, alert engine, enterprise SSO, and advanced observability integrations — are only available in the paid Enterprise Edition. Zuplo provides a free tier that includes all core gateway features, the developer portal, rate limiting, and API key management.

How does Gravitee’s pricing compare to Zuplo?

Gravitee’s managed Starter Edition starts at $2,500/month per gateway. The Community Edition is free but requires infrastructure investment and operational expertise. Zuplo offers a free tier, a Builder plan at $25/month, and Enterprise plans starting at $1,000/month that include fully managed hosting, global edge distribution, a developer portal, and high availability on all plans.

Can Gravitee deploy to the edge like Zuplo?

Gravitee is typically deployed as a centralized gateway in your own infrastructure or cloud environment. It does not have a built-in global edge network. To achieve global distribution with Gravitee, you need to deploy and manage multiple clusters across regions with your own routing infrastructure. Zuplo deploys your API to 300+ edge data centers automatically with zero configuration.

Does Gravitee support GitOps?

Gravitee has added CI/CD integration capabilities and supports configuration through its management API, which enables GitOps-style workflows. However, the primary workflow centers on the APIM Console UI. Achieving fully GitOps-driven management requires custom tooling. Zuplo’s entire platform is built around GitOps — all configuration lives in Git, every push triggers a deployment, and every pull request creates a preview environment.

Can I use Gravitee for AI and MCP use cases?

Gravitee has introduced an Agent Mesh capability for managing AI agent interactions and has added support for governing proxies that control how AI agents access models and tools. Zuplo takes a different approach with auto-generated MCP servers from OpenAPI specs, a centralized MCP Gateway for managing all MCP servers, model routing to major LLM providers, and real-time token usage and cost tracking.

What about async API support?

Zuplo is focused on synchronous REST and HTTP APIs. If your primary use case is event-native async APIs (Kafka, MQTT, Solace), Gravitee’s async gateway may be a better fit — though this capability requires the Enterprise Edition. For most external API management use cases centered on HTTP/REST, Zuplo’s feature set is comprehensive and its edge-native architecture provides performance advantages that Gravitee’s centralized deployment cannot match.

Conclusion

Gravitee and Zuplo serve different needs. Gravitee is a comprehensive, full-lifecycle API management platform with genuine strengths in event-driven architecture and self-hosted flexibility. Zuplo is a focused, edge-native API gateway and developer portal platform built for operational simplicity and developer experience.

If you need native async protocol support and want full control over your infrastructure, Gravitee is worth evaluating. If you want a modern API gateway that deploys globally in seconds with zero infrastructure overhead, TypeScript programmability, and built-in monetization, start with Zuplo for free and see the difference.

For teams evaluating their options across the broader market, see our best API management platforms for 2026 guide.