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SHEET 01 / API GATEWAY COST REFERENCE

Updated 9 June 2026 · Pricing verified against zuplo.com/pricing, June 2026

Zuplo Pricing 2026: Transparent Tiers, Expensive Overage, Generous Free Plan

Zuplo is a fully hosted, edge-deployed API gateway aimed at API-first product teams, and it does something rare in this category: it publishes its prices, including the Enterprise floor. Free is $0 with 100K requests/month. Builder is $25/month. Enterprise starts at $1,000/month on an annual contract. The catch sits in the middle: Builder overage runs $100 per additional 100K requests. Here is the full picture.

Quick Verdict

Zuplo is excellent value below 100K requests/month (free, with a real developer portal and API key management) and competitive again at Enterprise (from $1,000/month with a 99.5% SLA). The Builder middle band is the weak spot: at $1,000 per million requests of overage, a 1M request/month API pays $925, which is 474x the AWS HTTP API rate for the same traffic. You are buying developer experience and a hosted platform, not cheap request handling. Budget accordingly.

Zuplo API Management Tiers (June 2026)

Free

$0/mo

  • 100K requests/month
  • No custom domains
  • Unlimited environments, API keys, dev portals
  • 1 GB egress/month
  • Up to 2 gateway developers
  • No SLA, community support

Builder

$25/mo

  • 100K requests included
  • $100 per additional 100K requests
  • Plan ceiling: 1M requests/month
  • Up to 2 custom domains
  • 1 GB egress per 100K requests
  • No SLA, community support

Enterprise

From $1,000/mo

  • Annual contract; entry level includes 1M requests
  • 99.5% SLA at entry, up to 99.999%
  • 1 observability integration at entry
  • Up to unlimited requests, domains, egress
  • Volume discounts at scale
  • Custom pricing above the floor

All figures from zuplo.com/pricing, verified June 2026. Zuplo also lists a separate AI Gateway product (Builder free with 1,000 requests/month; Enterprise quote-only) and an open-source self-hosted developer portal at $0.

Worked Examples by Volume

The table below prices Zuplo at four realistic volumes against AWS HTTP API and Cloudflare Workers (both at published rates, 10 KB average payload for AWS data transfer). The comparison is deliberately unflattering at the Builder ceiling; the products bundle very different things, which the verdict section below addresses.

ScenarioZuploAWS HTTP APICloudflare Workers
100K req/month (side project or internal API)$0 (Free) or $25 (Builder, custom domain)$0.19$0.00 (free tier)
500K req/month (growing product API)$425 (Builder: $25 + 4 x $100)$0.93$0.00 (free tier)
1M req/month (Builder ceiling)$925 (Builder) or Enterprise from $1,000$1.95$0.00 (free tier)
10M req/monthEnterprise quote (from $1,000/mo, 1M included)$19.54$5.00 (Workers Paid)

Builder math: $25 base + $100 per 100K requests beyond the included 100K. At 1M requests that is $25 + 9 x $100 = $925/month, just below the $1,000/month Enterprise floor that includes 1M requests plus an SLA. AWS and Cloudflare figures from the AWS and Cloudflare pricing pages.

What You Are Actually Paying For

Comparing Zuplo's per-request price to AWS or Cloudflare misses what the product is. Zuplo is closer to a managed API platform than a raw proxy: configuration is code in a Git repository, every branch can get its own gateway environment, and the developer portal and API key infrastructure that Kong and Apigee sell as enterprise features are included on every tier, including Free.

Included on every tier

  • Hosted developer portal (unlimited)
  • API key management (unlimited keys)
  • Unlimited environments (per-branch previews)
  • Edge deployment across 300+ data centers
  • Programmable policies (TypeScript)

Gated behind paid tiers

  • Custom domains (2 on Builder, unlimited on Enterprise)
  • Any SLA at all (99.5% to 99.999%, Enterprise only)
  • Requests beyond 1M/month (Enterprise only)
  • Observability integrations (1 at Enterprise entry)
  • Egress beyond plan allowances

Zuplo vs Other Providers

Zuplo vs Kong

Zuplo wins below 100K requests/month on price (Free is $0; Konnect's cheapest paid control plane is $25/month with no permanent free tier) and ships its developer portal on the free tier. Kong wins on plugin ecosystem (300+ plugins), self-hosted data plane options, and Kubernetes nativity. They serve different buyers: Zuplo targets product teams shipping an API; Kong targets platform teams running many. See Kong pricing.

Zuplo vs AWS API Gateway

AWS is two to three orders of magnitude cheaper per request ($1.00/million vs $1,000/million Builder overage) and the obvious choice for Lambda-centric stacks. Zuplo counters with a developer portal, key management, and GitOps workflow that AWS simply does not provide; replicating them on AWS means building and running them yourself. See AWS pricing.

Zuplo vs Cloudflare

Both run at the edge (Zuplo deploys across 300+ data centers). Cloudflare Workers is vastly cheaper per request and free to 3M requests/month, but you write and maintain the gateway logic yourself. Zuplo is the productized version of that pattern: policies, portal, and keys out of the box. Cost-sensitive builders pick Cloudflare; teams buying time pick Zuplo. See Cloudflare pricing.

Zuplo vs Tyk

Opposite ends of the transparency spectrum: Zuplo publishes every tier including its Enterprise floor; Tyk publishes no prices at all. Tyk offers a full open-source gateway you can self-host for free, which Zuplo does not (its gateway is hosted-only; only the developer portal is open source). Self-hosting requirement points to Tyk; fastest hosted start points to Zuplo. See Tyk pricing.

When Zuplo is the Right Choice

Zuplo wins when

  • You are shipping a customer-facing API and need a portal plus key management on day one
  • Traffic is under 100K requests/month (genuinely free, no time limit)
  • GitOps workflow matters: config as code, per-branch preview environments
  • You want published pricing all the way up, including the Enterprise floor
  • A small team wants edge performance without operating Workers code or servers

Zuplo loses when

  • High-volume raw proxying: $1,000/million Builder overage vs $1.00/million on AWS HTTP API
  • You sit in the 200K-1M request band and need an SLA (Builder has none; Enterprise starts at $1,000/month)
  • The data plane must be self-hosted for compliance (Kong or Tyk instead)
  • Deep AWS-native integration (IAM auth, Lambda authorizers) is required
  • You need a large third-party plugin ecosystem

Related Pages

Kong Pricing

$25-$500/control plane/month + $200 per extra 1M requests. The platform-team alternative.

AWS API Gateway Pricing

HTTP API $1.00/M requests. The raw-proxy cost baseline.

Cost Calculator

Enter your volume and compare providers side by side.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Zuplo cost?+
Zuplo publishes three API management tiers as of June 2026. Free is $0/month with 100K requests/month, unlimited environments, API keys and developer portals, but no custom domains and no SLA. Builder is $25/month with 100K requests included, then $100 per additional 100K requests, capped at 1M requests/month, with up to 2 custom domains. Enterprise is custom-priced starting at $1,000/month on an annual contract, with the entry level including 1M requests, a 99.5% SLA and one observability integration. SLAs scale up to 99.999% with volume discounts at higher commitments.
Is Zuplo's free tier usable in production?+
For internal tools and early-stage APIs, yes, with two real caveats: no custom domains (you serve from a Zuplo-provided domain) and no SLA. You get 100K requests/month, 1 GB egress/month, unlimited environments, unlimited API keys, a developer portal, and up to 2 gateway developers. That is a genuinely functional free tier rather than a time-boxed trial. Once you need your own domain or any uptime guarantee, you are on Builder ($25/month) or Enterprise.
What happens when I exceed 100K requests on the Builder plan?+
Builder charges $100 per additional 100K requests above the included 100K, up to a hard plan ceiling of 1M requests/month. That works out to $1,000 per million requests, which is steep compared to raw gateway pricing (AWS HTTP API is $1.00 per million). At the full 1M requests, Builder costs $25 + $900 = $925/month, at which point Zuplo Enterprise (from $1,000/month including 1M requests plus a 99.5% SLA) is the better deal. In practice the overage pricing exists to move growing APIs onto Enterprise.
Is Zuplo cheaper than Kong?+
At the entry level they now look similar on paper: Zuplo Free is $0 and Builder is $25/month, while Kong Konnect Plus starts at $25/month for a Serverless control plane with 1M requests included (Kong offers a 30-day trial rather than a permanent free tier). The structures diverge at volume: Kong charges $200 per additional million requests with a hard cap of 10M/month on Plus, so a 50M request/month workload needs a custom Kong Enterprise quote, versus Zuplo Enterprise which starts at $1,000/month on annual contract. Zuplo is also fully hosted edge infrastructure, whereas Kong assumes you run the data plane on Hybrid and self-hosted plans.
Is Zuplo cheaper than AWS API Gateway?+
Per request, no. AWS HTTP API costs $1.00 per million requests; Zuplo Builder overage works out to $1,000 per million. But the products are not equivalents: AWS API Gateway is a raw proxy layer, while Zuplo bundles a developer portal, API key management, GitOps-based configuration with unlimited environments, and edge deployment. Under 100K requests/month Zuplo is free and AWS is not (after the 12-month free tier). Teams choose Zuplo for developer experience and time-to-ship, not for the lowest per-request rate.
When is Zuplo the right choice?+
Zuplo fits API-first products at low to moderate request volumes where developer experience, a hosted developer portal, API key management, and fast iteration matter more than per-request cost. It is one of the few vendors in the category with fully transparent published pricing, including its Enterprise floor. It is the wrong choice for very high-volume, cost-sensitive raw proxying (Cloudflare or AWS are far cheaper per request) and for organizations that must self-host the data plane, where Kong or Tyk fit better.
All Zuplo figures verified at zuplo.com/pricing in June 2026, including the $100 per additional 100K requests Builder overage and the $1,000/month Enterprise floor. Pricing subject to change; verify before purchasing. Not affiliated with Zuplo. See also: cost calculator home, full provider comparison, Tyk pricing.

Updated 2026-06-09