Learn More About API7 Products and APISIX
API7.ai offers a suite of API management products built on the Apache APISIX open-source project. This page explains the product landscape and helps you understand which product fits your needs.
API7 Product Family
| Product | Deployment | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| API7 Enterprise | Self-hosted (On-Premises) | Organizations requiring full control, data sovereignty, and enterprise features like RBAC, SSO, and audit logs. |
| API7 Cloud | Fully managed SaaS | Teams that want a managed control plane with self-hosted data planes. |
| Apache APISIX (Open Source) | Self-hosted | Developers and teams who need a high-performance API gateway without enterprise features. |
API7 Enterprise vs. Apache APISIX
API7 Enterprise is built on top of Apache APISIX and extends it with enterprise-grade features. The Data Plane (gateway) in API7 Enterprise is a hardened, commercially supported version of APISIX.
| Capability | Apache APISIX | API7 Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| High-performance proxying | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dynamic routing and load balancing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Rich plugin ecosystem | ✅ (100+ plugins) | ✅ (100+ plugins + enterprise-only plugins) |
| Dashboard UI | APISIX Dashboard (community) | API7 Dashboard (enterprise-grade) |
| RBAC and multi-tenancy | ❌ | ✅ (Roles, organizations, gateway groups) |
| Service versioning and publishing | ❌ | ✅ (Service templates → versions → publish) |
| Approval workflows | ❌ | ✅ |
| Audit logging | ❌ | ✅ |
| SSO | ✅ (Gateway SSO) | ✅ (Dashboard and Gateway SSO with more protocols) |
| Commercial support and SLAs | Community support | 24/7 enterprise support |
Key Concepts
Understanding these core concepts will help you navigate API7 Enterprise:
- Service Template: A reusable API configuration that defines a set of routes and upstream targets. Service templates are versioned and published to gateway groups.
- Gateway Group: A logical grouping of data plane instances that share the same configuration. Use gateway groups to separate environments (e.g., staging, production).
- Consumer: An API consumer identity used for authentication and authorization. Consumers can have credentials and per-consumer plugin configurations.
- Plugin: A reusable module that intercepts the request/response lifecycle to handle tasks like authentication, rate limiting, and observability.
- ADC (API Declarative CLI): A tool for managing gateway configurations through declarative YAML files, enabling GitOps workflows.
Control Plane/Data Plane Architecture
API7 Enterprise uses a decoupled architecture to provide scalability, flexibility, and resilience.
- Control Plane (CP): The central management point where administrators define policies and manage configurations. It stores data in a PostgreSQL database.
- Data Plane (DP): The high-performance traffic proxy that handles API requests. DP nodes are stateless and receive real-time updates from the CP over mTLS.
This design ensures that even if the Control Plane is temporarily unavailable, the Data Plane continues to operate and proxy traffic without interruption.
Next Steps
- Quick Start: Deploy API7 Gateway and proxy your first request.
- Configure and Manage APIs: Explore the full range of API management capabilities.
- Security and Compliance: Learn about the security features available in API7 Enterprise.