Airlock Microgateway review
A security-focused self-hosted gateway with a capable free Community Edition.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Airlock Microgateway is a self-hosted Kubernetes gateway for teams routing application and API traffic inside Kubernetes environments. It supports Ingress and Kubernetes Gateway API deployment patterns, reverse-proxy routing, TLS termination, mTLS connections, authentication, authorization, and API security. Its audience is security-conscious platform, infrastructure, and application teams that want gateway controls close to their workloads, rather than a hosted gateway service.
The Community Edition is free for reverse-proxy use cases and includes unlimited requests with no license required. Its published plan highlights include Kubernetes Gateway API support and community support. Premium Edition is aimed at enterprise setups and adds licensed access control and content-security features, along with Airlock support. Premium access is license-based, so buyers evaluating larger deployments should compare the required capabilities and licensing terms with their operating model.
Security and ecosystem fit are the product’s clearest strengths. Airlock Microgateway combines rate-limiting policies, OWASP Top 10 request filtering, JWT and OpenID Connect authentication, OpenAPI specification enforcement, and GraphQL validation. It also provides Prometheus, Grafana, logs, and traces for observability, with integrations including Redis, Valkey, cert-manager, Helm, Istio, Cilium, and Red Hat OpenShift. Choose it when self-managed Kubernetes deployment and layered traffic and API controls are priorities. Teams seeking a hosted service, or a simpler ingress controller without these security and validation requirements, should consider an alternative approach.
Airlock Microgateway pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Free Community Edition supports unlimited requests with no license required
- Combines TLS, mTLS, rate limiting, filtering, and authentication
- Integrates with Kubernetes, OpenShift, Istio, Cilium, Helm, and observability tools
- Where it doesn't
- Self-hosted deployment requires a Kubernetes environment
- Premium Edition uses license-based pricing
- Community Edition provides community support rather than Airlock support
Airlock Microgateway fact sheet, pricing and score →
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