Kubernetes Ingress NGINX
Ranked 6 of 7 reverse proxies by recommenders
Stable, flexible Kubernetes ingress controller that people say just worked and ran in production. Critics note it is being retired, with maintainership shortfalls and recent critical vulnerabilities.
Stable, flexible Kubernetes ingress controller that people say just worked and ran in production. Critics note it is being retired, with maintainership shortfalls and recent critical vulnerabilities.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 33%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Stable and reliable in production
“Its open source, it's super stable, your shit's not going to die tomorrow or ever.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Ingress Nginx Retirement: Deadlines, Risks, and Your Path Forward” “it was an extraordinarily useful and reliable project”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “It just worked and was stable”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” Flexible, supports many annotations
“Nginx Ingress Controller worked around that by supporting a ton of annotations”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “works so well, is so flexible, and does not have an equal yet”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Being retired, no longer maintained
“And it happens while we are all very enthusiastically dedicated to migrating off Kubernetes ingress-nginx. Just as planned.”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “the nginx ingress controller is now deprecated, so you have to choose from a handful of alternatives”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s” “the killing of the nginx ingress was the nail in the coffin”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” - Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Software Survival 3.0”
- Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes (2024)”
Under-maintained by too few people
“popular project probably used by many megacorps only propped up by the weekend charity of a couple unpaid suckers”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “The maintainer had plenty of people who wanted to help, but never spent the time to teach them.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “Ingress NGINX has always struggled with insufficient or barely-sufficient maintainership”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” - Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring”
Critical security vulnerabilities
“Exploiting this flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code and access all cluster secrets across namespaces”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling” “There have been critical vulns in nginx-ingress (the part which is deprecated)”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes (2024)” Alternatives considered better
“multiple full featured Ingress implementations that work better than the old nginx-ingress”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “Worst than nginx ingress controller”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Secret Store CSI is abandonned and should be shut down”
Other reverse proxies people recommend
The four most recommended other reverse proxies, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pangolin | 37 | 6 | 86% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Traefik | 27 | 8 | 77% | 10 | — | Approved |
| HAProxy | 24 | 2 | 92% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Envoy Proxy | 14 | 7 | 67% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Kubernetes Ingress NGINXThis page | 8 | 16 | 33% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
24 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the killing of the nginx ingress was the nail in the coffin”
“There have been critical vulns in nginx-ingress (the part which is deprecated)”
“there plans to retire ingress-nginx”
“the ingress-nginx endorsement aged well”
“Yeah abandoned. Fucked everyone over.”
“And it happens while we are all very enthusiastically dedicated to migrating off Kubernetes ingress-nginx. Just as planned.”
“don't take a ton of time or configuration”
“the nginx ingress controller is now deprecated, so you have to choose from a handful of alternatives”
“Exploiting this flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code and access all cluster secrets across namespaces”
“Worst than nginx ingress controller”
“there's no one who wants to maintain the complex lua written to make nginx cloud native”
“Nginx Ingress Controller worked around that by supporting a ton of annotations”
“Its open source, it's super stable, your shit's not going to die tomorrow or ever.”
“Ingress NGINX has always struggled with insufficient or barely-sufficient maintainership”
“I can't name a single of our customers at $WORKPLACE that's running something else.”
“ingress-nginx allowed you to inject arbitrary configuration with them, which ended up being a terrible idea”
“multiple full featured Ingress implementations that work better than the old nginx-ingress”
“The maintainer had plenty of people who wanted to help, but never spent the time to teach them.”
“It just worked and was stable”
“they are going to forbid people to commit anything to the project so even security patch will be blocked”
“popular project probably used by many megacorps only propped up by the weekend charity of a couple unpaid suckers”
“works so well, is so flexible, and does not have an equal yet”
“It wasn't the most loved part of k8s, to say the least.”
“it was an extraordinarily useful and reliable project”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.