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Comparison · Infra & APIs
ESPEasy vs Gloo Gateway
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ESPEasy and Gloo Gateway — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ESPEasy vs Gloo Gateway: at a glance
What is ESPEasy?
One release a year, each one a filesystem or networking rewrite you must plan for.
ESPEasy publishes rarely — five builds across two years — and each one accumulates hundreds of commits. The July 2026 mega build reworked how networking is handled and added support for Espressif's newer silicon: ESP32-P4, -C5 and C61. The 2025 build was the last to ship SPIFFS for ESP32, forcing a LittleFS conversion on everyone who upgrades past it. Release notes are raw commit lists grouped by contributor.
What is Gloo Gateway?
Gloo Gateway 1.20.29 stops a failed restart from wiping every Envoy's config
Gloo Gateway keeps maintaining 1.19, 1.20 and 1.21 in parallel. The 1.20.29 release fixes a failure where, after a gloo restart, a failed first reconcile sent every connected Envoy an empty config; it also keeps the in-memory Proxy store across setup re-runs and delays setup restarts until the first xDS sync. The 21 October batch had fixed proxies stuck on stale endpoints.
ESPEasy vs Gloo Gateway: editorial side-by-side
ESPEasy
3.8INFRA · APIS
One release a year, each one a filesystem or networking rewrite you must plan for.
◆ Current state
ESPEasy publishes rarely — five builds across two years — and each one accumulates hundreds of commits. The July 2026 mega build reworked how networking is handled and added support for Espressif's newer silicon: ESP32-P4, -C5 and C61. The 2025 build was the last to ship SPIFFS for ESP32, forcing a LittleFS conversion on everyone who upgrades past it. Release notes are raw commit lists grouped by contributor.
◆ Where it's heading
The project's pattern is long test cycles followed by a build that changes something foundational — filesystem, networking, MCU support — and asks users to back up settings before upgrading. Between those, only hotfixes appear. Development is heavily concentrated in one maintainer's commit stream, with the rest of the contributor list handling docs, build scripts and individual plugins.
◆ Prediction
Given the cadence, the next build is likely months out and shaped by whatever the current test-build issue accumulates; the newly added MCU families are the obvious place for follow-up plugin and peripheral work.
Gloo Gateway
5.0INFRA · APIS
Gloo Gateway 1.20.29 stops a failed restart from wiping every Envoy's config
◆ Current state
Gloo Gateway keeps maintaining 1.19, 1.20 and 1.21 in parallel. The 1.20.29 release fixes a failure where, after a gloo restart, a failed first reconcile sent every connected Envoy an empty config; it also keeps the in-memory Proxy store across setup re-runs and delays setup restarts until the first xDS sync. The 21 October batch had fixed proxies stuck on stale endpoints.
◆ Where it's heading
Recent work concentrates on control-plane failure modes: what Envoy receives when gloo restarts, reconciles badly or sends mismatched endpoint data. Each fix is backported across the supported lines alongside routine Go and dependency bumps.
◆ Prediction
The 1.21 and 1.19 backports of the empty-snapshot fix are the likely next entries, following the same-day batch pattern.
Alternatives to ESPEasy and Gloo Gateway
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either ESPEasy or Gloo Gateway.
Coder
Coder ships the same security backports to three release lines in one afternoon.
Robusta
Robusta's 0.54.0 alpha returns to features: Prometheus tenants by namespace and Holmes fixes.
Apache ShenYu
ShenYu is cutting 2.7.2 release candidates, but the tags still carry no notes.
k0s
k0s ships another four-branch patch round, with an IPv6 service CIDR fix on 1.37 and 1.36.
Honeycomb
Honeycomb's Canvas now remembers your systems and lays out each investigation in sections.
See all ESPEasy alternatives → · See all Gloo Gateway alternatives →
Recent activity from ESPEasy and Gloo Gateway
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoGloo Gateway1.20.29: failed reconcile no longer empties Envoy configs
- 14d agoGloo GatewayFix for proxies stuck on stale endpoints; Go 1.26.10
- 14d agoGloo Gateway1.20 backport of the stale-endpoint fix; Go 1.26.10
- 14d agoGloo Gateway1.19 backport of the stale-endpoint fix; Go 1.26.10
- 20d agoGloo Gateway1.20.27 bumps Go to 1.26.9
- 20d agoGloo Gateway1.21.18 bumps Go to 1.26.9
- 3mo agoESPEasymega-20260720 reworks networking and adds ESP32-P4, C5 and C61 support ⚡
- 9mo agoESPEasymega-20260121 hotfixes four issues from the 20260108 build
- 10mo agoESPEasymega-20260108 re-cuts the failed 20260107 build
- 10mo agoESPEasymega-20260107 lands eight months of accumulated work
- 1y agoESPEasymega-20250430 is the last ESP32 build with SPIFFS ⚡
- 1y agoESPEasymega-20241222 adds MQTT TLS with loadable CA certificates
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ESPEasy and Gloo Gateway?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Gloo Gateway is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 3.8), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is ESPEasy better than Gloo Gateway?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Gloo Gateway is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 3.8), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ESPEasy?
Top ESPEasy alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ESPEasy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/espeasy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Gloo Gateway?
Top Gloo Gateway alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Gloo Gateway alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/gloo for the full list with editorial commentary on each.