Get started with Gloo Gateway. Gloo Gateway is a control plane that implements the Kubernetes Gateway API for both microservices and AI workloads. The control plane translates your Kubernetes Gateway API resources into the configuration that the underlying data plane proxy can understand. The proxy layer is handled by kgateway’s implementation of Envoy for microservices or agentgateway for AI workloads.

Before you begin link

These quick start steps assume that you have a Kubernetes cluster, kubectl, and helm already set up. For quick testing, you can use Kind.

  kind create cluster
  

Install link

The following steps get you started with a basic installation. For detailed instructions, see the installation guides.

1. Set your Gloo Gateway license key as an environment variable. If you do not have one, contact an account representative. If you want to use the capabillities of agentgateway enterprise, you need an additional agentgateway enterprise license.

     export GLOO_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY=<gloo-gateway-license-key>
   export AGENTGATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY=<agentgateway-license-key>
     

2. Deploy the Kubernetes Gateway API CRDs.

     kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/download/v1.4.0/standard-install.yaml
     

3. Deploy the Gloo Gateway CRDs by using Helm. The following command uses the latest stable release, 2.0.1. For active development, update the version to 2.0.0-main.

     helm upgrade -i gloo-gateway-crds oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/solo-public/gloo-gateway/charts/gloo-gateway-crds \
     --create-namespace \
     --namespace gloo-system \
     --version 2.0.1 
     

4. Install Gloo Gateway by using Helm. Choose between the Envoy-based kgateway proxy or the AI-first agentgateway proxy. You can also enable both gateway proxy types. Note that you need a separate license for each gateway proxy type that you want to enable. For more information, see Gateway proxies.

     helm upgrade -i gloo-gateway oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/solo-public/gloo-gateway/charts/gloo-gateway \
     -n gloo-system \
     --version 2.0.1 \
     --set-string licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey=$GLOO_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY
     

     helm upgrade -i gloo-gateway oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/solo-public/gloo-gateway/charts/gloo-gateway \
     -n gloo-system \
     --version 2.0.1 \
     --set agentgateway.enabled=true \
     --set-string licensing.agentgatewayLicenseKey=$AGENTGATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY 
     

     helm upgrade -i gloo-gateway oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/solo-public/gloo-gateway/charts/gloo-gateway \
     -n gloo-system \
     --version 2.0.1 \
     --set agentgateway.enabled=true \
     --set-string licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey=$GLOO_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY \
     --set-string licensing.agentgatewayLicenseKey=$AGENTGATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY 
     

5. Make sure that the gloo-gateway control plane is running.

     kubectl get pods -n gloo-system
     

   Example output:

     NAME                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   gloo-gateway-5495d98459-46dpk   1/1     Running   0          19s
     

Good job! You now have the Gloo Gateway control plane running in your cluster.

Next steps link

Set up the data plane by choosing a gateway proxy depending on your use case.

Set up an API gateway with an httpbin sample app. This guide uses the Envoy-based Gloo Gateway proxy to set up an API gateway. Then, deploy a sample httpbin app, configure a basic HTTP listener on the API gateway, and route traffic to httpbin by using an HTTPRoute resource.

Set up an AI gateway with an MCP sample tool server. This guide uses the agentgateway proxy to set up an AI gateway that you can use for Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent-to-agent (A2A), large language model (LLM), and more AI-related use cases. The example deploys a sample MCP server with a fetch tool, exposes the tool with agentgateway, and tests the tool with the MCP Inspector UI.

Cleanup link

No longer need Gloo Gateway? Uninstall with the following command:

  helm uninstall gloo-gateway -n gloo-system
  

link