Tyk Editions and Feature Availability

Which Tyk features are in the free Community Edition and which need the Enterprise Edition, compared across Self-Managed, Tyk Cloud and Hybrid deployments.

This page shows which features each edition and deployment option includes. For prices and plans, see Tyk pricing.

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Editions

Tyk has two editions:

• Community Edition is free and open source. You run it on your own infrastructure.
• Enterprise Edition requires a license from Tyk. It adds management components such as Tyk Dashboard and the Tyk Developer Portal, along with enterprise features for Tyk Gateway and Tyk AI Studio. It has three deployment options: Self-Managed, Tyk Cloud and Hybrid.

For the license of each component and how to get the Enterprise features, see Tyk Stack.

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Deployment Options

Tyk has three deployment options for the Enterprise Edition:

• Self-Managed: the Enterprise Edition on your own infrastructure. You install Tyk Dashboard with a license and the tykio/tyk-gateway-ee image. See Install Tyk Self-Managed.
• Tyk Cloud: Tyk runs the control plane and the Cloud Data Planes for you. See Tyk Cloud.
• Hybrid: Tyk runs the control plane in Tyk Cloud. You run the gateways on your own infrastructure. See Hybrid Gateways.

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Feature Availability

The feature tables compare the Community Edition with the three Enterprise Edition deployment options.

• Community Edition: the open source Tyk Gateway (tykio/tyk-gateway) and Tyk Pump on your own infrastructure. There is no Tyk Dashboard and no license. See Tyk Open Source.
• Self-Managed, Tyk Cloud and Hybrid: the Enterprise Edition, with Tyk Dashboard and the Enterprise features of Tyk Gateway.

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Protocols

Protocol	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
HTTP/REST	✅	✅	✅	✅
GraphQL	✅	✅	✅	✅
↳ Federation	❌	✅	✅	✅
↳ Universal Data Graph	❌	✅	✅	✅
gRPC	✅	✅	❌	✅
TCP	✅	✅	❌	✅
WebSocket	✅	✅	❌	✅
Server-Sent Events (SSE)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Model Context Protocol (MCP)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Kafka	❌	✅	On request	✅

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MCP Gateway

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
MCP proxy for a remote MCP server	✅	✅	✅	✅
MCP client authorization with OAuth 2.0 and Protected Resource Metadata	✅	✅	✅	✅
REST API to MCP proxy	❌	✅	✅	✅
Upstream OAuth 2.0 for MCP servers	❌	✅	✅	✅
Token exchange for MCP servers	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Client Authentication

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Authentication token	✅	✅	✅	✅
Basic Authentication	✅	✅	✅	✅
JSON Web Token (JWT)	✅	✅	✅	✅
OAuth 2.0 with an external IdP	✅	✅	✅	✅
Tyk OAuth 2.0 authorization server	✅	✅	✅	✅
HMAC request signatures	✅	✅	✅	✅
Certificate authentication	✅	✅	❌	✅
Custom authentication with plugins	✅	✅	✅	✅
Multiple authentication methods	✅	✅	✅	✅
Identity Provider Registry	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Upstream Authentication

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Authentication token	✅	✅	✅	✅
Request signing	✅	✅	✅	✅
Basic Authentication	❌	✅	✅	✅
OAuth 2.0	❌	✅	✅	✅
Token exchange (RFC 8693)	❌	✅	✅	✅
Microsoft Entra ID On-Behalf-Of token exchange	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Access and Traffic Control

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Granular access control	✅	✅	✅	✅
Rate limiting	✅	✅	✅	✅
Request quotas	✅	✅	✅	✅
Request throttling	✅	✅	✅	✅
Batch requests	✅	✅	✅	✅

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Routing and Transformation

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Load balancing	✅	✅	✅	✅
Service discovery	✅	✅	✅	✅
Path rewriting and internal routing	✅	✅	✅	✅
Request and response transformation (headers, body, method)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Request validation	✅	✅	✅	✅
Mock responses	✅	✅	✅	✅
Response caching	✅	✅	✅	✅
Fully customizable error responses	✅	✅	✅	✅
Event stream mediation with Tyk Streams (Kafka, WebSocket, SSE, HTTP)	❌	✅	On request	✅

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Custom Processing via Plugins

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Go plugins	✅	✅	✅	✅
JavaScript plugins	✅	✅	✅	✅
Python plugins	✅	✅	✅	✅
gRPC plugins	✅	✅	❌	✅

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Observability

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry	✅	✅	✅	✅
OpenTelemetry metrics	✅	✅	✅	✅
Access logs	✅	✅	✅	✅
Traffic log export and analytics generation with Tyk Pump	✅	✅	✅	✅

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Integration with Secrets Managers

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Secrets from Vault, Consul and environment variables	✅	✅	✅	✅
Cloud secret stores (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, GCP Secret Manager)	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Tyk Dashboard

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
API Designer	❌	✅	✅	✅
API Design Governance	❌	✅	✅	✅
API traffic analytics	❌	✅	✅	✅
User management with RBAC	❌	✅	✅	✅
Local user login	❌	✅	✅	✅
Single sign-on (SSO) from your own IdP	❌	✅	✅	✅
User audit logs	❌	✅	✅	✅
Open Policy Agent (OPA) permission rules	❌	✅	✅	✅
Multi-tenant with separated data	❌	✅	✅	✅
Access Policy designer	❌	✅	✅	✅
Tyk Certificate Store management in Tyk Dashboard	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Developer Portal

This table lists the main capabilities of the Tyk Developer Portal. The Developer Portal license enables all of them. Individual capabilities do not need separate claims.

Capability	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
API Products	❌	✅	✅	✅
API Catalogs	❌	✅	✅	✅
API Plans	❌	✅	✅	✅
OpenAPI docs and GraphQL playground	❌	✅	✅	✅
MCP server docs and MCP Inspector playground	❌	✅	✅	✅
Developer Apps	❌	✅	✅	✅
Dynamic Client Registration	❌	✅	✅	✅
Users and Teams	❌	✅	✅	✅
Self-registration and custom sign-up forms	❌	✅	✅	✅
Single sign-on (SSO)	❌	✅	✅	✅
Themes, pages and branding	❌	✅	✅	✅
Blog	❌	✅	✅	✅
Webhooks and email notifications	❌	✅	✅	✅
Audit logs	❌	✅	✅	✅

For more information, see Tyk Developer Portal.

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Multi-Region and Automation

Feature	Community Edition	Self-Managed	Tyk Cloud	Hybrid
Gateways in many regions with Tyk MDCB	❌	✅	✅	✅
Kubernetes-native API management with Tyk Operator	❌	✅	✅	✅
GitOps and API configuration as code with Tyk Sync	❌	✅	✅	✅

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Tyk AI Studio

Tyk AI Studio has its own Community Edition and Enterprise Edition.

The following table compares the features available in Tyk AI Studio’s Community and Enterprise editions.

Feature	Community Edition	Enterprise Edition
LLM Proxy Gateway	✅	✅
Chat Interface	✅	✅
Tool Integration	✅	✅
User Management (Admin and Standard Users) (Learn more)	✅	✅
Hub-and-Spoke Deployment	✅	✅
Cost Tracking & Analytics	✅	✅
Plugin System (Learn more)	✅	✅
Main Ingress and Anthropic Messages Endpoint (Learn more)	✅	✅
LLM Failover (Learn more)	✅	✅
Embedders (Learn more)	✅	✅
Budget Management	❌	✅
Budget Enforcement	❌	✅
Budget Alerts	❌	✅
Team Budgets (Learn more)	❌	✅
Model Routers (Learn more)	❌	✅
Semantic Routers (Learn more)	❌	✅
Filter Scripts, Including Tool Calls (Learn more)	❌	✅
Guardrail Filters	❌	✅
Advanced SSO (SAML, OIDC)	❌	✅
Fine-Grained RBAC (Roles and Permissions)	❌	✅
Audit Trail (Learn more)	❌	✅
Governed Metadata	❌	✅
Outbound Webhooks (Learn more)	❌	✅
Tyk Dashboard MCP Integration (Learn more)	❌	✅
Semantic Caching (Advanced LLM Cache Plugin) (Learn more)	❌	✅
Asset Catalog Plugin	❌	✅
Priority Support	❌	✅

For how to get each edition, see Tyk AI Studio Licensing and Editions.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Tyk Gateway Free?

Yes. Tyk Gateway is open source under MPL 2.0. You can use the tykio/tyk-gateway image in production with no license. Some features, such as upstream OAuth, token exchange and Tyk Streams, are only in the Enterprise build (tykio/tyk-gateway-ee).

Is Tyk Dashboard Open Source?

No. Tyk Dashboard is closed source and needs a license. You can get a trial license from the Tyk website.

Can I Use the Tyk Developer Portal With the Open Source Gateway Only?

No. Tyk Developer Portal needs its own license and a connection to Tyk Dashboard.

Is the Tyk MCP Gateway Open Source?

Yes, for MCP proxies to a remote MCP server. A REST API to MCP proxy, upstream OAuth and token exchange need the Enterprise Edition. See MCP Gateway.

Is Tyk AI Studio Open Source?

Yes. Tyk AI Studio Community Edition is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL 3.0). You can use it in production with no license.

Enterprise features, such as budget enforcement, SSO and the audit trail, need an AI Studio Enterprise license.

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Get a License

• Self-Managed: get a trial license, or contact Tyk about licensing options.
• Tyk Cloud: create a free account.
• Prices and plans: see Tyk pricing.