ABOUT
NovaGate started when we got tired of maintaining Nginx configs, Lua plugins, and a Postgres cluster just to add rate limiting and per-key observability to a handful of microservices.
The pattern we kept running into: teams with 5–15 microservices that need JWT validation, rate limiting, and basic observability. Simple requirements — but every existing gateway either required you to operate significant infrastructure (Kong, Traefik) or was a black box that routed your traffic through someone else's servers (most SaaS API gateways).
We wanted something different: the control plane and dashboard hosted and managed for you (zero infrastructure to operate), but the gateway — the thing handling your actual traffic — running on your own server. The best of both models.
NovaGate is that product. The gateway is a single Docker container. It boots in seconds, connects to our control plane over WebSocket, and starts routing immediately. Config changes from the dashboard propagate in under a second. If our cloud ever has an outage, your gateway keeps working from its local cache.
We are in public beta. Everything is free while we build. The feedback from teams currently running NovaGate is directly shaping what we build next.
This is a non-negotiable design constraint. Every architectural decision is evaluated against it. If traffic ever touched our infrastructure, we would be a different product.
A config change that takes 30 seconds in the dashboard is worth more than a powerful CLI you have to learn. We optimise for the path from idea to running.
We document exactly what is implemented, not what is on the roadmap. Every feature page on this site describes code that exists today.
Rate limiting fails open. Missing config crashes the gateway at startup. JWTs distinguish expired from invalid. Good defaults prevent production incidents.
Create an account, deploy the gateway container, and have live request logs and rate limiting within 10 minutes.