The router

After you set up at least one federation-ready subgraph, you can configure a router (formerly known as a gateway) to sit in front of your subgraphs. The router serves as the entry point to your supergraph, and it executes incoming operations across one or more of your subgraphs:

Choosing a router library

Apollo actively supports the following options for your router:

• The Apollo Router (recommended): This is a high-performance, precompiled Rust binary.

  If you're getting started with federation, we recommend creating a cloud supergraph with Apollo GraphOS. With a cloud supergraph, GraphOS provisions and manages your router for you!

  You can also host your own Apollo Router instances:

  • Go to the Apollo Router docs.
  • See the federation quickstart (which uses the Apollo Router).

• Apollo Server: Apollo Server can act as your router via the @apollo/gateway extension library.

  • See how to set up Apollo Gateway.

We recommend starting with the Apollo Router. It's faster to configure, it's more performant (especially with high request loads), and it rarely requires writing custom code.

If you'll use the Apollo Router, get started with the resources linked above. If you'll use Apollo Server, see Setting up Apollo Gateway.