How is Spring Cloud Gateway different from Zuul?

Question

I have been using Zuul as the edge service and API Gateway. Recently I have noticed that Spring Cloud Platform release Spring Cloud Gateway. What is the difference between the two gateways? Why is the Zuul not extended to support the functionalities in S-C-Gateway? What was the driving factor for a new library altogether? When should it be used?

Otilia

Could you share the Spring [Boot] version you're refering to? – Monzon

Answer 1

I am the author of spring cloud gateway. Zuul is built on servlet 2.5 (works with 3.x), using blocking APIs. It doesn't support any long lived connections, like websockets.

Gateway is built on Spring Framework 5, Project Reactor and Spring Boot 2 using non-blocking APIs. Websockets are supported and it's a much better developer experience since it's tightly integrated with Spring.

Individualist

On Sept/Oct 2016, Netflix released Zuul 2. It is a non-blocking and asynchronous solution. The major architectural difference between Zuul 2 and Zuul 1 is that Zuul 2 is running on an asynchronous and non-blocking framework, using Netty. – Parthenopaeus

They have not released zuul 2, they announced it. The current development is being done on the 2.1 branch. – Individualist

@Individualist Is the performance problems of spring-cloud-gateway mentioned in this comparison solved? 229ms (scg) compared to 29ms (Zuul1) on 8core-16gb machine is not really useful. – Chengteh

Zuul 2.1.1 has been released on April 13, 2018. It is asynchronous and non-blocking. – Barham

Is there any difference in performance between Cloud Gateway vs. Netflix Zuul 2? – Whitcomb

So now that Zuul 2 is also asynchronous, is it useful for web sockets over stomp or still Spring Cloud Gateway is recommended @Individualist ? – Biak

Spring Cloud will not integrate zuul 2 – Individualist

For me, the websocket support is a huge thing, much needed if you are building an app which needs to show real time responses. – Charissacharisse