# Emissary vs Kong Gateway

| Attribute | Emissary | Kong Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 51.3 (54% (medium)) | 53.8 (74% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 56 | 10 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 4 | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | 4,521 | 44,260 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An open-source, CNCF incubation project providing a Kubernetes-native API gateway with Layer 7 load balancing and ingress capabilities for microservices, built on Envoy Proxy. It is indexed under API Gateways.","source":"https://emissary-ingress.dev/","question":"What is Emissary?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Emissary is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://emissary-ingress.dev/","question":"Is Emissary free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Emissary can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://emissary-ingress.dev/","question":"Can Emissary be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 7 integrations for Emissary, including Consul, Linkerd, Istio, Knative, Grafana, Prometheus and Datadog. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://emissary-ingress.dev/","question":"What does Emissary integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Emissary is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary","question":"Is Emissary open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"Kong provides a unified platform for building, testing, and governing APIs and AI agents. It handles both traditional API gateway functions—routing, rate limiting, authentication—and modern AI-specific concerns like token budgeting, context management, and LLM traffic control. It is indexed under API Gateways.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"What is Kong Gateway?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Kong Gateway offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"Is Kong Gateway free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Kong Gateway supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"What platforms does Kong Gateway support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Kong Gateway can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"Can Kong Gateway be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 11 integrations for Kong Gateway, including AWS Bedrock, Azure Content Safety, Google Cloud Model Armor, OpenAI, Anthropic, Llama 3, Kubernetes and Helm, plus 3 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"What does Kong Gateway integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 and GDPR for Kong Gateway. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Kong Gateway not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://konghq.com/compliance","question":"What security certifications does Kong Gateway have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Kong Gateway is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/Kong/kong","question":"Is Kong Gateway open source?","confidence":0.95},{"answer":"Kong Gateway is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States.","source":"https://konghq.com","question":"Where is Kong Gateway available?","confidence":0.5}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A gateway built on Envoy Proxy that provides Layer 7 load balancing, ingress traffic management with support for multiple protocols including gRPC and HTTP/2, and Kubernetes-native configuration through declarative routing policies. | Kong Gateway is a scalable API and LLM gateway platform designed for cloud-native deployments. It provides traffic management, authentication, rate limiting, request transformation, and advanced AI capabilities. |
| features.capabilities | `{"mtls":true,"hosting":"self","k8s_native":true,"grpc_support":true,"observability":true,"rate_limiting":true}` | `{"mtls":true,"hosting":"both","k8s_native":true,"oauth_oidc":true,"monetization":true,"observability":true,"rate_limiting":true,"developer_portal":true,"plugin_ecosystem":"extensive","request_transformation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 7 | 12 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Consul"},{"name":"Linkerd"},{"name":"Istio"},{"name":"Knative"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Datadog"}]` | `[{"name":"AWS Bedrock"},{"name":"Azure Content Safety"},{"name":"Google Cloud Model Armor"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Anthropic"},{"name":"Llama 3"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"Helm"},{"name":"Git"},{"name":"Stripe"},{"name":"Twilio"},{"name":"Llama","native":true,"category":"llm","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"DocuSign","native":true,"category":"business_process","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Insomnia","native":true,"category":"api_development","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Apache Kafka","native":true,"category":"event_streaming","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Redis","native":true,"category":"cache","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Prometheus","native":true,"category":"monitoring","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"cert-manager","native":true,"category":"pki","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"AWS Lambda","native":true}]` |
| language.primary | Python | Lua |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | - | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://emissary-ingress.dev/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-13T13:52:57.215Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source core; Kong Konnect cloud platform offers free trial and commercial subscriptions","sourceUrl":"https://konghq.com","retrievedAt":"2026-10-13T15:14:34.129Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 18 | 42 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.1.0","date":"2026-05-19T21:35:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.1.0-rc.0","date":"2026-05-01T19:56:39Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v4.1.0-rc.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.0.1","date":"2026-03-26T22:54:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.0.1-rc.0","date":"2026-04-30T20:43:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v4.0.1-rc.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.0.0-rc.2","date":"2026-03-06T16:28:04Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v4.0.0-rc.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v4.0.0-rc.1","date":"2025-12-02T19:04:29Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v4.0.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.10.0","date":"2025-07-29T17:20:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.9.1","date":"2023-11-20T16:00:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.9.1","date":"2023-11-20T15:59:12Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.9.0","date":"2023-11-13T12:42:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.9.0","date":"2023-11-13T12:40:29Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.8.2","date":"2023-10-11T14:11:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.8.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.8.2","date":"2023-10-11T14:09:30Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.8.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.8.1","date":"2023-09-18T14:54:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.8.1","date":"2023-09-18T14:53:18Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.8.0","date":"2023-08-29T12:30:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.8.0","date":"2023-08-29T12:28:24Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.7.2","date":"2023-07-25T17:22:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/chart/v8.7.2","date":"2023-07-25T17:20:17Z","type":"stable","version":"chart/v8.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/emissary-ingress/emissary/releases/tag/v3.7.1","date":"2023-07-13T17:36:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.1"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.4","date":"2026-10-12T07:27:48Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.3","date":"2026-06-17T06:02:19Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.2","date":"2026-06-04T07:12:53Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.1","date":"2025-06-04T09:20:05Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.0","date":"2024-12-13T04:17:54Z","type":"stable","version":"3.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.8.1","date":"2024-11-18T20:52:27Z","type":"stable","version":"3.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.8.0","date":"2024-09-11T09:19:15Z","type":"stable","version":"3.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/2.8.5","date":"2024-06-24T14:54:52Z","type":"stable","version":"2.8.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.7.1","date":"2024-06-21T09:38:32Z","type":"stable","version":"3.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.7.0","date":"2024-05-28T16:00:45Z","type":"stable","version":"3.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.6.1","date":"2024-03-04T14:19:57Z","type":"stable","version":"3.6.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.6.0","date":"2024-02-09T22:08:50Z","type":"stable","version":"3.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.5.0","date":"2023-11-08T09:50:40Z","type":"stable","version":"3.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.4.2","date":"2023-10-12T10:50:05Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.4.1","date":"2023-10-03T10:33:19Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/2.8.4","date":"2023-09-20T23:03:15Z","type":"stable","version":"2.8.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.4.0","date":"2023-08-09T15:57:37Z","type":"stable","version":"3.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.3.1","date":"2023-07-11T08:58:57Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.3.0","date":"2023-05-18T17:19:41Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.2.2","date":"2023-03-16T12:24:30Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.2"}]` |
| reliability.sla_pct | - | 99.99 |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 5.5 | 7.5 |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.trust_center | - | https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/trust-what-youre-shipping-with-insomnia-v12 |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Femissary-ingress%2Femissary%2Fv3&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2FKong%2Fkong&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (API Gateways)

| Capability | Emissary | Kong Gateway |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Self-hosted only | Cloud + self-hosted |
| Kubernetes-native | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Traffic** |  |  |
| Rate limiting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Request/response transformation | - | ✓ |
| **Security** |  |  |
| OAuth2 / OIDC / JWT | - | ✓ |
| Mutual TLS | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Protocols** |  |  |
| GraphQL gateway | - | - |
| gRPC support | ✓ | - |
| **Delivery** |  |  |
| Developer portal | - | ✓ |
| Monetization | - | ✓ |
| **Ecosystem** |  |  |
| Plugin ecosystem | - | Extensive |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Observability | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T18:33:43.471Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*