NGINX Gateway Fabric

NGINX Gateway Fabric is an open-source project that provides an implementation of the Gateway API using NGINX as the data plane. The goal of this project is to implement the core Gateway APIs -- Gateway, GatewayClass, HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute, TLSRoute, and UDPRoute -- to configure an HTTP or TCP/UDP load balancer, reverse-proxy, or API gateway for applications running on Kubernetes. NGINX Gateway Fabric supports a subset of the Gateway API.

For a list of supported Gateway API resources and features, see the Gateway API Compatibility doc.

Learn about our design principles and architecture.

Getting Started

1. Quick Start on a kind cluster.
2. Install NGINX Gateway Fabric.
3. Deploy various examples.
4. Read our How-to guides.

You can find the comprehensive NGINX Gateway Fabric user documentation on the NGINX Documentation website.

NGINX Gateway Fabric Releases

We publish NGINX Gateway Fabric releases on GitHub. See our releases page.

The latest release is 1.4.0.

The edge version is useful for experimenting with new features that are not yet published in a release. To use, choose the edge version built from the latest commit from the main branch.

The table below summarizes the options regarding the images, manifests, documentation and examples and gives your links to the correct versions:

Version	Description	Installation Manifests	Documentation and Examples
Latest release	For production use	Manifests.	Documentation. Examples.
Edge	For experimental use and latest features	Manifests.	Documentation. Examples.

Versioning

NGF uses semantic versioning for its releases. For more information, see https://semver.org.

Major version zero (0.Y.Z) is reserved for development, anything MAY change at any time. The public API is not stable.

Release Planning and Development

The features that will go into the next release are reflected in the corresponding milestone. Refer to the Issue Lifecycle document for information on issue creation and assignment to releases.

Technical Specifications

The following table lists the software versions NGINX Gateway Fabric supports.

NGINX Gateway Fabric	Gateway API	Kubernetes	NGINX OSS	NGINX Plus
Edge	1.1.0	1.25+	1.27.1	R32
1.4.0	1.1.0	1.25+	1.27.1	R32
1.3.0	1.1.0	1.25+	1.27.0	R32
1.2.0	1.0.0	1.23+	1.25.4	R31
1.1.0	1.0.0	1.23+	1.25.3	n/a
1.0.0	0.8.1	1.23+	1.25.2	n/a
0.6.0	0.8.0	1.23+	1.25.2	n/a
0.5.0	0.7.1	1.21+	1.25.x *	n/a
0.4.0	0.7.1	1.21+	1.25.x *	n/a
0.3.0	0.6.2	1.21+	1.23.x *	n/a
0.2.0	0.5.1	1.21+	1.21.x *	n/a
0.1.0	0.5.0	1.19+	1.21.3	n/a

*the installation manifests use the minor version of NGINX container image (e.g. 1.25) and the patch version is not specified. This means that the latest available patch version is used.

SBOM (Software Bill of Materials)

We generate SBOMs for the binaries and the Docker image.

Binaries

The SBOMs for the binaries are available in the releases page. The SBOMs are generated using syft and are available in SPDX format.

Docker Images

The SBOM for the Docker image is available in the GitHub Container repository. The SBOM is generated using syft and stored as an attestation in the image manifest.

For example to retrieve the SBOM for linux/amd64 and analyze it using grype you can run the following command:

docker buildx imagetools inspect ghcr.io/nginxinc/nginx-gateway-fabric:edge --format '{{ json (index .SBOM "linux/amd64").SPDX }}' | grype

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting help, see the Troubleshooting document.

Contacts

We’d like to hear your feedback! If you experience issues with our Gateway Controller, please open a bug in GitHub. If you have any suggestions or enhancement requests, please open an idea on GitHub discussions. You can contact us directly via [email protected] or on the NGINX Community Slack in the #nginx-gateway-fabric channel.

Community Meetings

Every Tuesday at 9:30AM Pacific / 5:30PM GMT

For the meeting link, updates, agenda, and meeting notes, check the calendar below:

NGINX Gateway Fabric Meeting Calendar

If you have a use case for NGINX Gateway Fabric that the project can't quite meet yet, bugs, problems, success stories, or just want to be more involved with the project, come by and say hi!

Contributing

Please read our Contributing guide if you'd like to contribute to the project.

Support and NGINX Plus

If your team needs dedicated support for NGINX Gateway Fabric in your environment, or you would like to leverage our advanced NGINX Plus features, you can reach out here.

To try NGINX Gateway Fabric with NGINX Plus, you can start your free 30-day trial, then follow the installation guide for installing with NGINX Plus.