Tyk Reviews

My main use case for Tyk is for internal API gateway. For a banking customer, I have internal APIs and external APIs, where internal APIs are mostly on Kubernetes. For internal API gateway, we have developed some security frameworks within Tyk, which is how we use Tyk only for internal APIs. This setup is Kubernetes native, which is good, and even the custom plugin development for validating the token is something we use a lot.

The best features Tyk offers are highly customizable options, effective traffic management, and security, making it easy to configure and use.

The customizability of Tyk is evident in our validation of the token—specifically with our internal identity and access management. There were challenges on the network side and in managing token validity and the public key, but Tyk allowed us to configure these aspects effectively. I believe those are the standard out-of-the-box capabilities provided by Tyk that we are using, particularly regarding traffic management and security.

Tyk has positively impacted my organization by providing standard API management capabilities, such as a single view for all APIs, discoverability, and role-based access control for overseeing who can see which APIs.

Tyk can improve in terms of AI capabilities, and the developer portal could benefit from enhancements such as user onboarding workflows. The developer community could be better, especially compared to peers, and in terms of AI capabilities, I have not heard about AI plugins from Tyk, which most API vendors provide. However, apart from that, the basic API gateway capabilities are good.

I have been using Tyk for around three years.

Tyk is stable.

Tyk's scalability is impressive; it processes millions of transactions for our internal APIs, and we have never faced any scalability issues.

Customer support is excellent, and their support personnel, along with professional services, know the product really well, resulting in a good experience dealing with them. I would rate the customer support a definite 10.

Positive

We have not switched from Tyk.

We evaluated WSO2, and the customer was using Azure Cloud before choosing Tyk.

While we could not quantify any commercial improvement, developer experience has definitely improved.

I would rate Tyk around an eight on a scale of one to ten because I have worked with other API management platforms such as Apigee, Kong, and Azure API Gateway. Compared to Apigee or Kong, I find they excel beyond Tyk, which is the reason for my score.

Tyk is deployed in my organization on-premises. For another customer, we spoke with Tyk salespeople, and my experience is that they are supportive and share details effectively.

I think Tyk is very flexible and customizable for the internal API gateway, so I definitely recommend it. For external APIs, I would suggest using more mature tools. Tyk is a good product in terms of cost and deployment options.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor as partners. My overall rating for Tyk is eight out of ten.

On-premises

Other

Connecting APIs securely with load balancing is my main use case for Tyk. Our applications connect to the AWS cloud microservice from the UI layer to the backend layer, so instead of exposing the actual backend API layer, we are having the proxy layer handled by Tyk. The UI accesses through Tyk to get the backend data necessary for the user to display.

Tyk is high performance and open source enterprise API gateway. Its high performance and open source aspects have benefited my work as it is extremely light and incredibly fast to deliver the response.

Tyk has granular traffic control, fine-tuned for rate limiting, request throttling and fixed quotas for API key or user. Our organization has been using Tyk for a very long time as a major API management platform.

Tyk allows teams to define specific traffic routing, authentication methods, and security policies for individual versions of an API.

There are some architectural bottlenecks, including operational complexity and multi-component overhead. Unlike single binary modern alternatives like Traefik or Zuul, running a production-ready Tyk instance requires orchestrating an expensive web of infrastructure dependencies. Tyk could improve by consolidating state management, reducing reliance on dual data layers for embedding lightweight default storage to simplify local development and horizontal scaling.

Under heavy production workloads involving complex request transformation, Tyk could performance tune by tightening Go's garbage collection allocation under high connection concurrency or optimizing the internal cryptographic engine for mTLS token validation.

I have been working with Infosys for the past eleven and a half years.

Tyk is stable.

Tyk is performing well, and if we need more Tyk servers, it is automatically scalable.

Tyk's customer support has been quite good. I would rate the customer support an eight on a scale of one to ten.

Previously we have used Google Gateway, and then we migrated to Apache API Gateway.

We usually upgrade Tyk when there is a patch activity or maintenance that has been available and recommended for production. We usually maintain the system up to date with the latest versions, approximately two times per year.

I do not have a complete picture because I am a vendor company working for an external organization. We are a partner, a vendor company that is helping an insurance provider.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is overall good.

We evaluated and chose only Tyk before selecting.

I have not used the AI capability yet of Tyk, so I do not have a recommendation in that area.

When enterprise applications communicate with public or private LLMs, Tyk intercepts the data payload to enforce strict compliance.

It is very easy for our team to gain Tyk principles because we have external documentation. We have our internal Grafana to monitor all the APIs and right now we are migrating to Dynatrace to monitor all the APIs running through Tyk.

Tyk's documentation and community support is helpful compared to other solutions I have used. Tyk is a wonderful API management gateway for maintaining enterprise-grade applications.

I would rate this review an eight overall.

Private Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

At the time, my main use case for Tyk was more for security and exposure matters related to business. Part of what I was trying to solve with Tyk was authentication, access control, request volume, protection, and a bit of protection against code injection such as SQL Injection, and from there on it was already extras.

In my opinion, the best features that Tyk offers were the rate limiting and authentication themselves.

The positive impact was more in terms of understanding because the other tools I evaluated were harder to understand how to use and how to configure. In that respect, I found it much more intuitive and it helped me better understand the concepts and the functioning itself, which I thought was easier to use. I noticed the ease of configuration and the knowledge itself.

I cannot really say much about Tyk because it has probably already improved significantly since the last time I used it. I chose the number eight because I think at the time I ended up using the version and I had not found, or there was not, a way for me to install it locally to study and learn a way of using the tool.

In IT itself, it has been more than twenty years, but in software architecture specifically I would say it has been at least about fifteen years.

Tyk was stable even during the tests I performed.

I did not run any tests regarding scalability or performance, and I did not run any test in that sense.

I was well served regarding customer support during my evaluation period, but I only used email contact at the time. Regarding questions themselves, not necessarily support, I used only the official documentation available on the website itself.

I evaluated other options before choosing Tyk. I had evaluated Axway's, IBM's, Kong's, Google's, and I think a couple more that I do not remember off the top of my head.

Tyk was implemented in my environment during this evaluation period in the provider's own cloud.

In terms of return on investment, it was more in terms of learning, as it was the tool that I suggested to other people to start learning and using the concepts of. It was more in the sense of knowledge sharing itself.

I did not use a different solution for this type of need yet; it was a proposal exactly to choose a solution for that.

As it was more experimental, I also did not end up using it in production or in real cases. As it was in isolation, I do not have anything to add, but probably if it had gone ahead there might have been some integration with the company's security control. It is difficult to say regarding advice I would give to other people who are thinking about using Tyk. As it has been a long time since I did this evaluation, probably a lot has changed since then, and I do not think I have anything else to add beyond what has already been asked. I would rate this review an eight.

The common elements of the use case are a medium to a high volume of API calls, generally in a Microsoft-based environment, and occasionally Amazon. Implemented on the public cloud primarily for financial institutions.

Serving retail clients with a reasonably complicated system architecture involving legacy technology and a variety of more modern administration services and systems. Then, the full customer service frontend, where we've got the design interface plugged into the customer journey flows, makes those somewhat dynamic with a standard render forward from the CNA.

Of the non-Microsoft solutions, Tyk is probably the fastest to get up and running. It has fewer idiosyncrasies than many of its competitors.

The cost curve is far smoother, both in terms of volume and the number of calls it's running on, compared to most competitors. So it's a tad more expensive at the very low end, but the curve is nothing like Apigee or some of the others.

In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly better communication with the customer base that would be my main issue with them. But as a product, it's very difficult to find any major faults.

I have been using Tyk for two and a half years. I've worked for organizations where we've basically consumed them, acquired the product, or used it as part of our overall delivery solution.

The stability is very good. 

The scalability is very good. That was a key factor in the selection, like how it could be pushed to high volume and scalability, which seemed to be very good. We haven't as yet had a need to push it to that extent.

Our clients are mostly medium and enterprise businesses for this solution. 

There's always things where we need to go back to. Their support provision is very good, and they do provide routes to make inquiries, self-learn, etcetera. 

But, I've never come across anything I would regard as ten, which is almost like I don't need to go to support. 

There are things to go to support. That's usually about how to exploit it better rather than anything else.

Positive

I have worked with Axway and Microsoft.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

The deployment incorporates all elements, not just Tyk. So, the deployment time also depends on the configuration. 

The actual setup can be done within a day. Like Docker and containerized... So the prep's quick, but it's a lot more than Tyk. So, deployment is not a material issue. 

We were the third party. We helped the clients with the deployment process. 

It's hard to put a mark because the overall solution involves more than just Tyk. Tyk is just one component, so the ROI the customers see is on the entire system, not individual parts.

The pricing is actually quite competitive. In Azure environments, it gets beaten by Microsoft API Gateway, but on the other hand, it offers some features that Microsoft lacks. So it really comes down to cost-benefit in the end.

I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. 

Understand the projected or expected growth rate, the nature of your API usage, and any industry-specific support available from Tyk or its competitors. Some tools are better suited for certain market sectors. 

Most importantly, focus on the total cost, including anticipated server growth, not just call volume growth.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

Other than the limitations with the cloud version everything else is fantastic. You can set up workflows and write limited pieces of logic. 

We tried hosting it on our own machines, which we thought would solve the problem, but Tyk, despite being pretty good for the features it claims to support, is still in its early stages, and is still maturing. It's still pretty new.

We ran it for a while, but then we decided to move away from Tyk, because Tyk's cloud version, the SaaS version, has a significant limitation of limited flexibility, so you can't program very much.

If you need anything customized, Tyk's cloud solution isn't for you. On the cloud version allowing customization is something, I'd like to see.

I would like the ability to add custom headers to the request.

I would like to see customizability included. Most API gateways, in my opinion, lack orchestration capabilities. If they can solve that really well, they will be able to quickly rise to the top of the market.

We evaluated Tyk for over a month.

We used the latest version.

We started with the cloud-based version and then moved on to the hosted version.

In terms of stability, we had no issues. In fact, one of our competitors, who also happens to be good friends, has been using Tyk in production for quite some time. It hasn't caused any issues.

We did not test it for scalability yet because we were only running in-house test workloads at the time, and we would have once we knew that all other conditions were met, but because other conditions were not met, we did not move forward with the scalability. I felt, and through my, research Tyk is found to be reasonably scalable. I have also heard this from people who use it.

We only asked one question, and it was resolved within a reasonable amount of time.

I believe they can improve their support for multiple programming languages.

We had found a solution, and we still have that solution, which required the use of an API gateway. We wanted some programming logic to be programmed at the API gateway level. At the time the college chose API Gateway.

That was something we wanted to do, but unfortunately, we desired greater flexibility in terms of our ability to program and wanted to make the best decision, and we chose Apigee, not Tyk or AWS. Apigee provided the best support for that flexibility.

Apigee requires a massive installation, a very bulky installation, which requires a significant amount of maintenance, overhead, and cost. 

The reason we didn't go ahead with the Apigee was that it was becoming very expensive, in terms of license and maintenance costs, as well as setup time. 

We tried Tyk, and a  couple of our client's competitors are already using Tyk, and they are using it pretty extensively. 

When it did not meet with our needs in terms of being able to customize, we looked into AWS API Gateway, which supports that through AWS Lambda, a serverless function, but it has limitations in terms of certain hardbound limitations, such as an API timeout of a maximum of 30 seconds or 10 seconds. I'm not sure what it is. It was also unsuitable for APIs, particularly external APIs that take far too long to respond. As a result, we did not proceed with any API Gateway. Instead, we made use of AWS AppSync. AppSync resolved two of our issues. One is solved by an API gateway, which allows you to connect to any number of data sources over the internet.

It also allows you to have Lambda functions, which you can customize and use to write any custom logic you want in most modern programming languages. Third, because it provides graph scale endpoints, it helped us save a lot of time on our backend development.

We tried it and found it to be quick and easy to set up. The setup time was really, really quick.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

I run a company with its own team of developers. We were also involved in a joint venture with a client.

It does not require a lot of maintenance.

We were the integrators as well as the owners in this joint venture, no third parties were used.

It had a free version, which suited many of our needs, but not all, but we were happy to go ahead with the licensed version as well, which is the paid version.

We are required to pay a licensing fee. There are no additional costs, it was pretty transparent.

To be honest, I don't remember much about the license, but as far as I know, there was nothing alarming.

We compared a few options. We compared Apigee, Tyk, and finally AWS API Gateway. We don't use any of these. We had decided to go ahead with the Tyk, but for some reason, we changed our minds. In addition, we are now utilizing AWS AppSync. It matched our use case better. There are, however, pros and cons of each.

If they are considering an API gateway for a straightforward API gateway case, use case, but if they are considering something more, something that an ESB should support, such as orchestration, transformations, flow management, routing, if those are the capabilities that they are requiring, then it is better to avoid using an API gateway and instead go for a more complex solution, like MuleSoft.

From my experience, I would rate Tyk a six out of ten.

Public Cloud

We use this solution to measure, and eventually scale our application programming interfaces.

The portal for developers that this solution provides has great functionality.

We also like the products design of the UX and the UI, which is easy to understand and manipulate as needed.

We would like a better tool for generating documentation for the APIs to be developed.

We have been using this product for nearly four years.

We have found this to be a vary stable solution for use in development.

We believe this to be a scalable product, but we have not yet tested this aspect of the solution. 

The technical support for this product have been very good to date They provide a lot of useful communication, which allows us to fix issues without having to raise tickets.

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward, but it does require configuration work before being deployed.

We are using the open-source version of this product, so there are no licensing costs for its use.

I would advise organizations to start small with the solution, and ensure that the configuration is complete before beginning implementation.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and Tyk is one of the solutions that we implement for our customers. It is an API gateway and management system that is the single entry point for all of the microservices.

The most valuable feature is the load balancing with the circuit-breaker function.

The virtual endpoint and distributing requests work well.

It integrated well with other solutions, such as Datadog.

Sometimes when new features are released, they are not immediately stable. It can take a few months for them to catch up completely.

I have been working with Tyk for about three years.

Tyk is really stable and we haven't had any crashes in three years. It is the type of solution that is running all of the time.

The scalability is awesome. Most of our customers are large businesses with a lot of internet traffic. One of our clients installed this product on AWS and the auto-scaling is great.

Depending on the requirements, the solution is sized accordingly. If there are more than five nodes then it is unlimited, so it is very flexible.

The technical support is good. They use a ticket-based system and they respond within two business days, without any SLA.

I used Kong at one point but it was quite some time ago, so I do not have recent experience with it.

The initial setup is straightforward and really easy. They distribute a Docker version, which can be installed within several minutes after a couple of clicks.

Depending on the requirements, this solution can be deployed on-premises, not the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration.

We deployed this solution for our customers, and one person is all that is required.

There are different versions and plans available depending on the requirements, so there is flexibility in terms of the pricing. Compared to other products, this is a cheaper solution.

Our customers are happy with the features and performance, and I have not heard any complaints with respect to technical support.

Tyk only has a single product, so the length of time between updates is really short. For example, if there is a change in a security specification then they catch up quickly.

Overall, this is a good product but they could improve in terms of stability and performance with new updates that are released.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

What we have been trying to do is reveal APIs for some businesses that we're trying to create that still use some of our legacy platforms and incorporate the newer technologies that we're trying to bring on.

It really has not improved our organization as the product was never fully implemented in production. The intent was to have the product help us to transform our platform offerings to better serve the broad differences in need of our customer base.

The most valuable features in Tyk Management are some of the API features. This includes the API versioning, the API catalog, and the API dashboard. 

It is a little bit difficult to evaluate what needs to be improved at this point because we were evaluating the product. It is not the first name that comes to mind when you think of API management, so I guess from a standpoint of evaluation we are at a disadvantage.

That said, maybe the automation of processes could possibly be improved but I'm not really sure how it would be different and better than IBM's API Connect. One of the reasons why we tended to favor IBM is because they offer several products that we already use.

It's like IBM can connect and can easily be integrated into our existing landscape whereas Tyk is really an entirely new product. They need to come up with products that can help to more easily integrate APIs and provide a standard set of APIs for particular products. Sort of like product integration packs that would simplify deployment.

In exploratory research, we were using the solution for six months.

I can't answer about stability in a production environment because we were trying to explore the features and how to work with them and we never really got to that stage of deployment where we would test it under load.

I cannot say for sure about how scalable the solution was because we actually never used it in production. We took the technology as it came out of the box and just evaluated it as it was without modifications to see if it would fit easily into our model.

We never had the opportunity or need to engage with Tyk technical support.

We did not switch products from what we were using after evaluation. We had hoped it would help us scale our options for deployment and reduce costs.

The initial setup of the product was very straightforward. 

The installation was done by us and generally just for ourselves and the purposes of evaluation. We did a POC (Proof of Concept) in Mozambique before deciding to further evaluate the product. We were just trying to evaluate it and the test did not last more than a week.

Tyk has a whole lot of features. You could actually break them up into separate products, maybe like an ESB, the actual API, the security component with a security manager and so on. This would allow for delivering partial packages that were cheaper. Not everyone will need or even want all the features.

We were using a few other products including WSO2 and IBM API Connect.

Tyk looked like a good product. I think the only reason we didn't go with it was because, from a group perspective, we were mandated to go with IBM. The reason we were looking at it was because of cost. Some of the customers cannot afford the IBM solution.

It looked like a lightweight product that we could use, that was reasonably priced and helps to reduce costs for clients who preferred that advantage. In the end, we ended up not using it because we managed to negotiate a deal with IBM to help lower the cost of the solutions we were already using.

In rating the product overall, I'll give it a seven out of ten.

They could really improve on recognition of their brand name, their marketing and their overall appearance in the market.

I am a back and front end developer and I have a great experience with Tyk Management. We mainly use it to manage our APIs. We have API introductions for our customers.

The feature I find most valuable is that this solution allows us to manage our security. 
I like that it is open-source and that we can expand it in the future. We also have all the functionalities to manage our APIs. I like that I can manage the dashboard and that the solution offers the possibility of managing our gateways and security. 

I would like to see some additional features like having some extensions for .NET core because we use it for our back-end language.

I've been using this solution for almost a year now as tech leader and developer.

Up to now the solution has been very stable.

We have used our own API management system in the past, but we decided to switch to Tyk. 

The initial setup was very easy and we have organized the information for our developers to make it easier for them. So now we have everything managed already so that is easy for one to understand. The deployment took about three weeks.

We currently have three engineers who are responsible for the deployment and management of Tyk. We might add two or three more engineers in the future.

I will rate this solution a nine out of ten. If they add extensions for back-end development, I will give a rating of ten.