SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#apigateway--Traefik Labs, the creator of the world's leading cloud-native application proxy, today introduces a seamless upgrade path to API runtime governance and turnkey integrations with Coraza WAF and Treblle API Observability. Separately, Traefik Labs marks a milestone of 50,000 GitHub stars, highlighting its steadfast commitment to open-source.

A Progressive Path towards API Runtime Governance

Traefik Labs is excited to announce a seamless journey that empowers organizations to evolve from using Traefik Proxy as an Application Proxy to leveraging it as a powerful API Gateway, and ultimately embracing comprehensive API Lifecycle Management with robust governance capabilities. This progression enables DevOps and Platform Engineering teams to incrementally adopt advanced API governance features without disrupting existing infrastructures or facing steep learning curves.

What sets this evolution apart is Traefik's pioneering focus on the often-overlooked realm of API Runtime Governance. Beyond just design-time considerations, Traefik embeds runtime governance deeply into its platform to ensure APIs perform consistently, securely, and efficiently in real-world production environments. By enforcing essential operational policies — such as secure deployments, stringent access controls, real-time performance monitoring, and rapid anomaly response — Traefik bridges the gap between API design and operation. This holistic approach empowers teams to maintain consistent, compliant, and secure APIs throughout their entire lifecycle, safeguarding against real-world challenges like security breaches and unexpected downtime.

"As someone deeply invested in automating API governance, I see Traefik Labs addressing a critical gap in runtime API governance that the industry has long overlooked," said Ikenna Nwaiwu, author of Automating API Delivery and Principal Consultant at Ikenna Consulting. "Their solution ensures real-time compliance, performance, and reliability for API operations. For organizations embracing cloud-native, Kubernetes, and GitOps, Traefik Labs is an essential partner for elevating modern API delivery."

Open-Platform Integration: Expanding the Ecosystem

Traefik Labs' mission to offer the best cloud-native API management solution extends beyond internal innovation, actively fostering an open platform that thrives on best-of-breed and seamless third-party integration. Two recent integrations highlight this bold vision:

Native OWASP Coraza WAF: As malicious attacks on the software supply chain have surged — tripling over the past year to exceed 245,000 incidents — the threat landscape has become increasingly perilous. This astonishing growth underscores that the software supply chain is now one of the fastest-growing vectors for adversaries, including nation-state actors, to execute malicious code.

Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) have emerged as an essential line of defense, effectively detecting and mitigating these common threats. Recognizing this imperative, Traefik Labs has advanced its security offerings by natively integrating Coraza WAF into the Traefik API Gateway, moving beyond its earlier WebAssembly (WASM) plugin implementation. This native integration delivers a remarkable performance boost — up to 23 times faster than before — providing industry-leading security without compromising speed or efficiency.

"The 23x performance boost from Coraza's native integration with the Traefik API Gateway marks a significant breakthrough in securing large-scale production environments," said Jose Carlos Chavez, co-leader of the OWASP Coraza project. "With the rapid scaling of incidents in today's industry, deploying a WAF is no longer optional — it's essential. As attackers increasingly exploit known vulnerabilities, the combination of a high-performance WAF like Coraza with Traefik's cloud-native API gateway is crucial for fortifying the security posture of modern distributed infrastructures."

Treblle API Observability: As organizations rapidly expand their API ecosystems, the surge in the number and usage of APIs introduces significant complexity and places additional pressure on engineering, platform, and product teams. Addressing these hurdles and reinforcing its commitment to user-centric API management, Traefik Labs has integrated Treblle's real-time API observability tools into the Traefik Hub API Management platform. This integration offers granular debugging capabilities, empowering developers and Ops teams with instant visibility into API traffic and dramatically improving troubleshooting and performance monitoring.

"We are beyond excited to join forces with Traefik Labs, delivering an industry-first integration that gives users seamless, one-click access to Treblle's API Intelligence capabilities directly from within the Traefik Hub platform. This partnership offers a holistic API runtime user experience, providing organizations with real-time insights and the tools they need to optimize API performance, improve API security, and accelerate API delivery," said Vedran Cindrić, Founder & CEO of Treblle.

Doubling Down on Open-Source in a Shifting Landscape

As many in the industry retreat from open-source models and start charging for core capabilities, Traefik Labs is doubling down on its commitment to open source, democratizing access to powerful API gateway and API lifecycle management capabilities and making it easier for users to evolve alongside its platform.

"With over 50,000 GitHub stars, 3.3 billion Docker pulls — eight times more than the next open-source alternative, a community of over 750 contributors, and more than 100,000 instances powering mission-critical workloads, we're making a significant impact on the industry," said Sudeep Goswami, CEO of Traefik Labs.

For more information, visit the Traefik Hub website and the Traefik Labs blog.

About Traefik Labs

Traefik Labs helps organizations adopt and scale cloud-native architectures by providing a modern, intuitive, and open platform that reimagines application connectivity and API management, paving the way for seamless operations and enhanced productivity. Traefik's flagship open source project, Traefik Proxy, is used by the world's largest enterprises and is one of Docker Hub's top 15 projects, with over 3.3 billion downloads, 50k stars on GitHub. Founded in 2016, Traefik Labs is backed by investors including Balderton Capital, Elaia, 360 Capital Partner, and Kima Ventures. For more information, visit traefik.io and follow @traefik on X.

Marie Ponseel for Traefik Labs
marie.ponseel@traefik.io