Ingress Controllers

In order for an Ingress to work in your cluster, there must be an ingress controller running. You need to select at least one ingress controller and make sure it is set up in your cluster. This page lists common ingress controllers that you can deploy.

Note:

The Kubernetes project recommends using Gateway instead of Ingress. The Ingress API has been frozen.

This means that:

  • The Ingress API is generally available, and is subject to the stability guarantees for generally available APIs. The Kubernetes project has no plans to remove Ingress from Kubernetes.
  • The Ingress API is no longer being developed, and will have no further changes or updates made to it.

Ingress controllers

Kubernetes as a project supports and maintains AWS, and GCE ingress controllers.

Third party ingress controllers

Note: This section links to third party projects that provide functionality required by Kubernetes. The Kubernetes project authors aren't responsible for these projects, which are listed alphabetically. To add a project to this list, read the content guide before submitting a change. More information.

Using multiple Ingress controllers

You may deploy any number of ingress controllers using ingress class within a cluster. Note the .metadata.name of your ingress class resource. When you create an ingress you would need that name to specify the ingressClassName field on your Ingress object (refer to IngressSpec v1 reference). ingressClassName is a replacement of the older annotation method.

If you do not specify an IngressClass for an Ingress, and your cluster has exactly one IngressClass marked as default, then Kubernetes applies the cluster's default IngressClass to the Ingress. You mark an IngressClass as default by setting the ingressclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class annotation on that IngressClass, with the string value "true".

Ideally, all ingress controllers should fulfill this specification, but the various ingress controllers operate slightly differently.

Note:

Make sure you review your ingress controller's documentation to understand the caveats of choosing it.

What's next


Last modified December 19, 2025 at 5:39 PM PST: Update Alibaba Cloud Ingress provider reference (486ea03aeb)

Items on this page refer to third party products or projects that provide functionality required by Kubernetes. The Kubernetes project authors aren't responsible for those third-party products or projects. See the CNCF website guidelines for more details.

You should read the content guide before proposing a change that adds an extra third-party link.