# motiv-labs/janus

An API Gateway written in Go

Repository: https://github.com/motiv-labs/janus
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/motiv-labs-janus
Homepage: https://hellofresh.gitbooks.io/janus
Language: Go
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: api-gateway, proxy, go, api, microservices, reverse-proxy, platform, engineering-experience-squad
Last push: 2024-07-08T07:17:06+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3705, "days_push": 786, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2840, forks 324 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:24.715463+00:00)

## What it is
Janus is a lightweight, open-source API Gateway and management platform written in Go, distributed as a single binary. It handles authorization, access control, rate limiting, and analytics for APIs, with hot-reloading configuration and OpenTracing support.

## Use cases
- manage access control and rate limiting for my microservices apis
- self-host an open-source api gateway in go
- add authentication and api keys in front of my backend services
- proxy and route requests to multiple upstream services
- monitor api usage and analytics without building my own middleware
- get circuit breaker and retry logic for upstream services

## When to choose
- you want a lightweight, single-binary gateway with no dependency hell
- you need programmatic REST API control over gateway configuration
- you want hot-reloading config and graceful shutdown out of the box
- you prefer a simple open-source alternative to Kong or Tyk

## When to avoid
- you need a large plugin ecosystem or extensive enterprise features
- you require active, frequent maintenance - releases have slowed
- you need deep cloud-native integrations beyond OpenTracing
- your stack is not comfortable operating a Go-based self-hosted component

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: maintenance
- function: api-gateway, proxy, middleware, rate-limiting, auth, tracing, http-server
- domain: apis, microservices, backend, developer-tools, self-hosted
- platform: windows, go, cross-platform
- tags: reverse-proxy, api-management, single-binary, hot-reload, circuit-breaker, opentracing, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- motiv-labs/janus (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:24.715463+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:37:16.647552+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/motiv-labs/janus (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:24.715463+00:00, sha f609c8a13eee)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.