Istio
Istio is an open-source service mesh platform that provides a comprehensive solution for managing, securing, and monitoring microservices in a distributed system. It acts as a middle layer between services, handling communication, routing, and load balancing, as well as providing visibility into the traffic flowing between services. Istio also offers advanced security features such as access control, authentication, and encryption to ensure that communication between services is secure.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles Istio the way a machine reads it — 37 machine-readable artifacts across 14 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Istio scores 56.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 48/100 (agent ready). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
How we profile Istio
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Istio. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 14
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Istio Telemetry API
The Istio Telemetry API (telemetry.istio.io) provides configuration resources for managing observability within an Istio service mesh. The Telemetry resource enables flexible co...
Istio Mesh Config API
The Istio Mesh Config API (istio.mesh.v1alpha1) provides global configuration for the Istio service mesh control plane and data plane proxy behavior. It includes MeshConfig for ...
Istio Operator API
The Istio Operator API (istio.operator.v1alpha1) defines the IstioOperator custom resource used to install, configure, and upgrade Istio on Kubernetes clusters. It provides a de...
Istio AuthorizationPolicy API
Fine-grained access control policies for workloads
Istio DestinationRule API
Policies applied to traffic after routing (load balancing, connection pool, outlier detection)
Istio Gateway API
Load balancer configuration at the edge of the mesh
Istio PeerAuthentication API
Mutual TLS configuration for peer-to-peer communication
Istio RequestAuthentication API
JWT-based request authentication policies
Istio ServiceEntry API
External service entries added to the mesh service registry
Istio Sidecar API
Sidecar proxy configuration for inbound and outbound traffic
Istio VirtualService API
HTTP/TCP routing rules for traffic management
Istio WasmPlugin API
WebAssembly plugin configuration for Envoy proxy extensions
Istio WorkloadEntry API
Non-Kubernetes workload (VM/bare metal) endpoint properties
Istio WorkloadGroup API
Collection of workload instances sharing common properties
Scroll within the panel for all 14 ·
Open Collections 4
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
Istio Extensions API
OPEN COLLECTIONIstio Networking API
OPEN COLLECTIONIstio Security API
OPEN COLLECTIONIstio Telemetry API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Istio Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Istio Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Istio Finops
FINOPSSemantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Istio Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 1
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
Istio API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 11
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Istio AuthorizationPolicy
JSON SCHEMAIstio DestinationRule
JSON SCHEMAIstio Gateway
JSON SCHEMAIstio PeerAuthentication
JSON SCHEMAIstio RequestAuthentication
JSON SCHEMAIstio ServiceEntry
JSON SCHEMAIstio Sidecar
JSON SCHEMAIstio Telemetry
JSON SCHEMAIstio VirtualService
JSON SCHEMAIstio WasmPlugin
JSON SCHEMAIstio WorkloadEntry
JSON SCHEMAScroll within the panel for all 11 ·
Security Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Istio — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 1
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 4
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 1
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 3
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 5
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Company 4
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/istio · machine-readable index on apis.io