In a Kubernetes environment, an ingress controller manages north-south traffic from the outside world, directing it to the correct pods within the platform, while providing features such as traffic routing and load balancing, HTTP and HTTPS routing, SSL/TLS termination, name-based virtual hosting, dynamic reconfiguration, authentication and authorization. In contrast, an API gateway accepts requests, applies rules, and forwards authorized traffic to backend APIs, serving as the entry point for external clients to access your application, offering features like request routing and composition, protocol translation, authentication and authorization, rate limiting and circuit breaking, load balancing and scalability, caching, and monitoring and analytics. While both solutions share overlapping functionalities, their purposes are distinct and complementary, with ingress controllers exclusive to Kubernetes and API gateways platform-agnostic, suitable for simple routing requirements or more comprehensive API management, offering greater adaptability and advanced security protocols.