Best VPS for an API Gateway

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Gateways are light but critical

An API gateway routes, rate-limits, and authenticates traffic. Tools like Kong, Traefik, and Nginx are efficient, so a 1–2GB VPS handles surprising load — but it must stay up, so reliability beats specs.

What to look for

• Stable, low-latency networking since every request passes through
• Dedicated IPv4 for clean TLS and DNS setup
• Full root access to tune worker processes and buffers
• SSD storage for Kong’s database or Traefik’s certificates

Docker makes this easy

docker run -d --name traefik -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock traefik:latest

One small unmanaged VPS can front several backend services. Keep the gateway on its own box so a bad deploy can’t take down routing.