🚀 Features
Add context_id selector for telemetry to expose unique per-request identifier (PR #8899)
A new context_id selector is now available for router, supergraph, subgraph, and connector telemetry instrumentation. This selector exposes the unique per-request context ID, which you can use to reliably correlate and debug requests in traces, logs, and custom events.
The context ID was previously accessible in Rhai scripts as request.id but had no telemetry selector. You can now include context_id: true in your telemetry configuration to add the context ID to spans, logs, and custom events.
Example configuration:
telemetry:
instrumentation:
spans:
router:
attributes:
"request.id":
context_id: true
supergraph:
attributes:
"request.id":
context_id: true
subgraph:
attributes:
"request.id":
context_id: true
connector:
attributes:
"request.id":
context_id: true
By @BobaFetters in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8899
Enable Unix Domain Socket paths (PR #8894)
Enables Unix Domain Socket (UDS) paths for both coprocessors and subgraphs. Paths must use ?path= as the query param: unix:///tmp/some.sock?path=some_path
By @aaronarinder in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8894
Add configurable pool_idle_timeout for HTTP client connection pools (PR #9014)
Adds a new pool_idle_timeout configuration option to the HTTP client used by subgraphs, connectors, and coprocessors. This controls how long idle keep-alive connections remain in the connection pool before being evicted. The default is 15 seconds (up from the previous hardcoded 5 seconds). Setting it to null disables the idle eviction interval entirely, meaning pooled connections are never evicted due to idleness.
The option is available at every level where HTTP client configuration applies:
traffic_shaping:
all:
pool_idle_timeout: 30s # applies to all subgraphs
subgraphs:
products:
pool_idle_timeout: 60s # per-subgraph override
connector:
all:
pool_idle_timeout: 30s # applies to all connectors
sources:
my_source:
pool_idle_timeout: 60s # per-source override
coprocessor:
url: http://localhost:8081
client:
pool_idle_timeout: 30s # coprocessor client
By @aaronarinder in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9014
Add persisted query ID context key (PR #8959)
Adds a context key for the persisted query ID in the router. The PersistedQueryLayer now stores the persisted query ID in the request context, and the Rhai engine can access it via that key.
By @faisalwaseem in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8959
Add retry layer for push metrics exporters (PR #9036)
Adds a RetryMetricExporter layer that retries up to three times with jittered exponential backoff for the apollo metrics and otlp named exporters.
By @rohan-b99 in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9036
🐛 Fixes
Support more types of nullable elements in response/entity cache keys (PR #8923)
PR #8767 (released in Router v2.11.0) changed the entity and response caching keys to support nullable elements. The implementation covered the case of a field explicitly being set to null, but didn't cover the following cases:
- Nullable field being missing
- Nullable list items
This change adds support for those cases.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8923
Pin transitive h2 dependency at minimum v0.4.13 to pick up critical flow-control, deadlock, and tracing fixes (PR #9033)
h2 0.4.13 (released January 5, 2026) contains three fixes directly relevant to the router, which uses h2 exclusively as a client when connecting to subgraphs:
-
Capacity deadlock under concurrent streams (#860) — high relevance: Under concurrent load with max_concurrent_streams limits in effect, flow-control capacity could be assigned to streams still in pending_open state. Those streams could never consume the capacity, starving already-open streams and permanently freezing all outgoing traffic on the connection with no error surfaced. This is directly triggerable in the router: any subgraph behind Envoy or a gRPC backend advertises a max_concurrent_streams limit (Envoy defaults to 100), and under production load the router will routinely queue more concurrent requests than that limit allows.
-
OTel tracing span lifetime leak (#868) — high relevance: The h2 Connection object captured the active tracing span at connection creation time as its parent, keeping that span alive for the entire lifetime of the connection. Since the router wraps every subgraph request in an OpenTelemetry span and connections are pooled, affected spans could linger indefinitely under sustained traffic — never being exported to the tracing backend and accumulating in memory.
-
Flow-control stall on padded DATA frames (#869) — lower relevance for typical subgraphs, higher for connectors: Padding bytes in DATA frames were not being returned to the flow-control window, causing the connection window to drain to zero and permanently stalling downloads with no error. Typical GraphQL/gRPC subgraphs do not send padded frames, but router connectors calling arbitrary HTTP APIs (e.g., Google Cloud Storage or CDN-backed endpoints) can encounter this.
By @theJC in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9033
Return 503 for rate limit traffic shaping (PR #9013)
Reverts PR #8765.
When the router's rate limit or buffer capacity is exceeded, it now returns HTTP 503 (Service Unavailable) instead of HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests).
HTTP 429 implies that a specific client has sent too many requests and should back off. HTTP 503 more accurately reflects the situation: the router is temporarily unable to handle the request due to overall service load, not because of the behavior of any individual client.
This change affects both router-level and subgraph-level rate limiting. Documentation has been updated to reflect the new status code.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9013
Set Cache-Control: no-store when the response cache returns GraphQL errors (PR #8933)
When using the response cache plugin, if a query spans multiple subgraphs and one returns an error or times out, the final HTTP response was still carrying the successful subgraph's Cache-Control header (e.g. max-age=1800, public). This allowed intermediate caches (CDNs, reverse proxies) to cache and serve incomplete or stale partial responses to other clients.
If the response cache plugin is enabled and was going to set a Cache-Control header, but the response contains any GraphQL errors, it now sets Cache-Control: no-store instead of the merged subgraph cache control value.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8933
Apply entity-less subgraph errors to the nearest parent instead of every entity
When making an entity resolution, if entity resolution fails (for example, because the path from the subgraph was malformed), the router applied errors to every item in the list of entities expected. For example, if 2000 entities were expected but 2000 errors were returned instead, each error was applied to every entity. This causes an explosion of errors and leads to significant memory allocations that can cause OOMKills.
When the router can't determine where an error should be applied, it now applies it to the most immediate parent of the targeted entity — for a list of users, it applies to the list itself rather than to each index of that list.
By @aaronArinder in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8962
Report http.client.response.body.size and http.server.response.body.size consistently when content-length is absent or compression is used (PR #8972)
Reporting these metrics previously relied on either the Content-Length header or the size_hint of the body, which reports the uncompressed size. OpenTelemetry semantic conventions recommend reporting the compressed size.
The router now consistently reports the compressed size when compression is used, even when Content-Length is absent, for:
- Router → client responses
- Subgraph → router responses
- Connector → router responses
By @rohan-b99 in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8972
Ensure query planning allocation stats are still recorded if cooperative cancellation is not enabled (PR #8902)
The metric apollo.router.query_planner.memory was unintentionally only showing allocations during the query_parsing compute job if cooperative cancellation for query planning was not enabled. Both query_parsing and query_planning should now be available.
By @rohan-b99 in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8902
Align ServiceMonitor naming with other chart resources using the router.fullname helper (Issue #TSH-22160)
The ServiceMonitor Helm resource was using .Release.Name directly as its metadata.name, while all other chart resources (e.g. Service, Deployment) already used the router.fullname helper. This caused a naming inconsistency: for a release named my-release, the Service would be named my-release-router but the ServiceMonitor would be named my-release.
This change aligns the ServiceMonitor name with the rest of the chart by using {{ include "router.fullname" . }}, ensuring consistent naming and proper support for nameOverride and fullnameOverride values.
By @mateusgoettems in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8929
Return null data and respect error location config for fully-unauthorized requests (PR #9022)
When the query planner rejected a request because all fields were unauthorized, the response always placed errors in the errors array and returned data: {}, ignoring the configured errors.response location (errors, extensions, or disabled). The router now returns data: null and respects errors.response and errors.log, consistent with partially-unauthorized requests.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9022
Handle both deprecated enum values when merging coprocessor context (PR #8913)
A change to coprocessor context merges in Router v2.10 caused keys to be deleted when context: true is used as the coprocessor context selector in the router configuration file.
The workaround was to pass context: deprecated instead. This change brings parity when context: true is provided.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8913
Block router startup when certain OTEL environment variables are set (PR #8915)
The router now fails to start if any of the following OpenTelemetry (OTEL) environment variables are set:
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINTOTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINTOTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT
Using these variables isn't supported by the router because they can override or interfere with its built-in telemetry configuration, leading to unexpected behavior.
Previously, the router emitted a warning when OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT was present. Startup is now blocked to prevent unintended telemetry configuration conflicts.
If your deployment defines any of these environment variables (for example, through base container images, platform defaults, or infrastructure tooling), remove them before starting the router.
By @OriginLeon in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8915
Prevent the readiness ticker from resetting the sampling window clock on recovery (PR #8966)
The readiness ticker recreated its interval_at inside the recovery loop on every cycle, which reset the sampling window clock each time the router returned to ready. This caused inconsistent sampling behavior across recovery cycles. Additionally, the rejection counter was read and zeroed with separate atomic operations (load + store(0)), leaving a race window where rejections arriving between the two operations could be silently dropped.
The fix creates the interval once outside the loop, sets MissedTickBehavior::Delay to prevent catch-up ticks after the recovery sleep, and uses swap(0, Relaxed) to atomically read and reset the rejection counter in a single operation.
By @OriginLeon in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8966
Ensure http2only uses h2c for cleartext connections (PR #9018)
hyper does not support upgrading cleartext connections from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/2. To use HTTP/2 without TLS, clients must use 'prior knowledge' — connecting with the HTTP/2 preface directly. This is what experimental_http2: http2only is for, but previously HTTP/1 was always enabled in the connector, causing the client to fall back to HTTP/1.1 regardless. This fix applies to all outbound HTTP connections: subgraphs, connectors, and coprocessors.
experimental_http2 | TLS | protocol used |
|---|
disable | yes | HTTP/1.1 |
disable | no | HTTP/1.1 |
enable | yes | HTTP/2 (if server supports it), else HTTP/1.1 |
enable | no | HTTP/1.1 |
http2only | yes | HTTP/2 |
http2only | no | HTTP/2 (h2c — cleartext prior knowledge) |
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/9018
Reject invalid values for client library name and version (PR #8934)
Rejects invalid values (validated against a regex) for library name and version provided in headers or operation extensions, which are used for the Client Awareness feature and telemetry.
By @BoD in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8934
Correct no-store and no-cache behavior for response cache and entity cache plugins (PR #8948 and PR #8952)
no-store and no-cache have different meanings. Per RFC 9111:
no-store: allows serving a response from cache, but prohibits storing the response in cacheno-cache: prohibits serving a response from cache, but allows storing the response in cache
(Note: no-cache actually prohibits serving a response from cache without revalidation — but the router doesn't distinguish between lookup and revalidation.)
The response caching and entity caching plugins were incorrectly treating no-store as both 'no serving response from the cache' and 'no storing response in the cache.' This change corrects that behavior.
By @carodewig in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8948 and https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8952
Allow exists conditions with request_header selectors on response-stage coprocessor and event configurations (PR #8964)
Using exists: { request_header: <name> } as a condition on response-stage coprocessor or telemetry event configurations (e.g. on: response) previously caused the router to reject the configuration at startup with a validation error, even though the condition is valid and works correctly at runtime.
The validator was incorrectly rejecting request-stage selectors inside Exists conditions for response-stage configurations. This is safe because evaluate_request() pre-resolves these conditions before they are stored for response-time evaluation: if the header is present the condition becomes True; if absent, the event or coprocessor call is discarded and never reaches the response stage.
By @OriginLeon in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8964
📃 Configuration
Enable the router to pull graph artifacts from insecure (non-SSL) registries
You can configure a list of safe registry hostnames to enable the router to pull graph artifacts over HTTP instead of HTTPS. Insecure registries are commonly run within a private network such as a Kubernetes cluster or as a pull-through cache, where you want to avoid the overhead of setting up and distributing SSL certificates.
By @sirddoger in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8919
🛠 Maintenance
Update to OpenTelemetry 0.31.0 (PR #8922)
The router now uses v0.31.0 of the OpenTelemetry Rust libraries. This update includes many bug fixes and performance improvements from upstream.
The router doesn't guarantee the stability of downstream pre-1.0 APIs, so users that directly interact with OpenTelemetry must update their code accordingly.
As part of this upgrade, Zipkin Native exporter is deprecated upstream. Switch to the OTLP exporter, which Zipkin now supports natively. Note that Zipkin Native exporter no longer supports setting a service name — if you need this, switch to the OTLP exporter.
By @BrynCooke @goto-bus-stop @rohan-b99 in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8922
Use cargo build --locked --release in DIY Dockerfile.repo for deterministic, lockfile-respecting builds (PR #8983)
The DIY Dockerfile.repo previously used cargo install --path apollo-router, which doesn't enforce the versions in Cargo.lock — resulting in possible non-deterministic dependency resolution and builds that could diverge from what CI produces.
Using cargo build --locked --release -p apollo-router ensures the versions in the lockfile are respected and the DIY build path more closely aligns with CI.
By @theJC in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8983
📚 Documentation
Document AWS API Gateway support for HTTP multipart subscriptions
Updates the API gateway subscriptions documentation to reflect that Amazon API Gateway now supports response streaming for REST APIs. HTTP multipart subscriptions are supported when the router is behind AWS API Gateway. Includes a link to the AWS announcement (November 2025) and a short configuration note linking to Response transfer mode.
By @smyrick in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8907
Add documentation for experimental_hoist_orphan_errors configuration
Adds the experimental_hoist_orphan_errors configuration option to the YAML configuration reference. The documentation covers the feature's purpose (reducing multiplicative error propagation from entity resolution), per-subgraph and global enablement examples, the spec compliance caveat, and the known limitation that error counts are reduced but not hard-capped.
By @andywgarcia in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8999
Document proxy root certificate configuration for router containers (PR #8823)
Documents how to add corporate proxy root certificates to Apollo Router containers — required for enterprise environments where TLS inspection proxies intercept HTTPS traffic.
The documentation includes:
- Instructions for Docker deployments (runtime mount and custom image approaches)
- Instructions for Kubernetes deployments (init container and custom image approaches)
- Guidance for cloud deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Links added to all containerization deployment guides
By @the-gigi-apollo in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8823
Correct JWT authentication example hierarchy in the router authentication guide
Updates the GraphOS Router authentication guide to use the correct JWT configuration path in the YAML example. The example now shows authentication.router.jwt.jwks and authentication.router.jwt.on_error, matching the actual router configuration hierarchy.
By @the-gigi-apollo in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8901
Document http_client span attribute limitations (PR #8967)
Documents that http_client span attributes don't support conditions or the static selector, causing a router startup failure when attempted.
By @mabuyo in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8967
🧪 Experimental
Add experimental_hoist_orphan_errors configuration for controlling orphan error path assignment
Adds a new experimental_hoist_orphan_errors configuration that controls how entity-less ("orphan") errors from subgraphs are assigned paths in the response. When enabled for a subgraph, orphan errors are assigned to the nearest non-array ancestor in the response path, preventing them from being duplicated across every element in an array. This can be enabled globally via all or per-subgraph via the subgraphs map. Per-subgraph settings override all.
Here's an example when targeting a specific subgraph, my_subgraph:
experimental_hoist_orphan_errors:
subgraphs:
my_subgraph:
enabled: true
An example when targeting all subgraphs:
experimental_hoist_orphan_errors:
all:
enabled: true
And an example enabling for all subgraphs except one:
experimental_hoist_orphan_errors:
all:
enabled: true
subgraphs:
noisy_one:
enabled: false
Use this feature only if you know you have subgraphs that don't respond with the correct paths when making entity calls. If you're unsure, you probably don't need this.
By @aaronArinder in https://github.com/apollographql/router/pull/8998
