# Evaluating Apollo Router: Understanding Free and Open vs Commercial Features

DevFeed: [Evaluating Apollo Router: Understanding Free and Open vs Commercial Features](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/evaluating-apollo-router-understanding-free-and-open-vs-commercial-features-23292.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.apollographql.com/blog/evaluating-apollo-router-understanding-free-and-open-vs-commercial-features>)

Author: Phil Prasek

Published: 2023-06-13T11:01:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Apollo Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/apollo-blog.md>)

Topics: [GraphQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/graphql.md>), [Platform Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/platform-engineering.md>), [GraphOS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/graphos.md>), [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>)

Tags: [apollo](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apollo.md>), [apollo-federation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apollo-federation.md>), [core](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/core.md>), [governance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/governance.md>), [graphos](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/graphos.md>), [graphql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/graphql.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [platform-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/platform-engineering.md>), [router](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/router.md>), [schema](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/schema.md>), [self-service](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/self-service.md>)

## AI overview

Apollo explains how Apollo Router is positioned as a free and open core for federated GraphQL, while some features require a GraphOS subscription. The article describes platform engineering use cases, runtime policies, YAML configuration, extensibility hooks, Rhai scripting, and native Rust plugins.

## Source excerpt

Apollo's largest customers like Indeed and Expedia are embracing a platform engineering approach to GraphQL. This enables individual GraphQL API teams to publish changes to a schema in a self-service fashion without manual review. A build pipeline composes each team-level schema into a unified supergraph with policies that can be enforced by the Router at runtime.