Comparison

Envoy AI Gateway vs Kong AI Gateway

On the evidence we track, Envoy AI Gateway leads this comparison with a composite score of 59/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
★Envoy AI Gateway59
Kong AI Gateway53
Score
vioscaleAI score
Envoy AI Gateway59 / 100medium · 54%
Kong AI Gateway53 / 100low · 34%
Pricing
Free tier
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Model
Envoy AI Gatewayopen_source
Kong AI Gatewayfreemium
Price level
Envoy AI Gatewayfree
Kong AI Gatewaylow
Transparent
Envoy AI Gateway–
Kong AI Gateway✗
Integrations
Count
Envoy AI Gateway16
Kong AI Gateway11
Adoption
Dependent repos
Envoy AI Gateway0
Kong AI Gateway–
Github stars
Envoy AI Gateway2,229
Kong AI Gateway–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Envoy AI Gateway68
Kong AI Gateway–
Release
Cadence days
Envoy AI Gateway6
Kong AI Gateway–
History
Envoy AI Gateway20 items
Kong AI Gateway–
License
Spdx
Envoy AI GatewayApache-2.0
Kong AI Gateway–
Language
Primary
Envoy AI GatewayGo
Kong AI Gateway–
Market
Availability
Envoy AI Gateway–
Kong AI GatewayAvailable worldwide
Content
Faq
Envoy AI Gateway6 items
Kong AI Gateway6 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for llm gateways. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Capabilities
Openai compatible API
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Automatic failover
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Routing strategy
Envoy AI GatewayCustom
Kong AI GatewayCustom
Caching
Envoy AI GatewaySemantic
Kong AI GatewaySemantic
Virtual key management
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Budget spend controls
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Rate limiting
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Guardrails moderation
Envoy AI Gateway-
Kong AI GatewayBuilt in
Request cost observability
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Streaming support
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway-
Deployment model
Envoy AI GatewaySelf hosted
Kong AI GatewaySelf hosted
Open source
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Pricing model
Envoy AI GatewayOpen source self host
Kong AI GatewayOpen source self host

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Envoy AI Gateway

Leader

An open-source gateway built on Envoy that centralizes AI traffic management by forwarding OpenAI-compatible requests to various LLM providers with automatic failover, token-based rate limiting, and Kubernetes-native deployment.

Independently observed

Kong AI Gateway

A cloud-native gateway platform that manages traffic between applications and large language model providers, offering multi-provider routing with automatic failover, semantic caching, cost visibility, compliance guardrails, and audit logging—without requiring changes to application code.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Envoy AI Gateway

Leader
Open sourceFree tier

Open-source. Commercial managed hosting and enterprise self-hosted options available.

as of verify ↗

Kong AI Gateway

HybridFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Envoy AI Gateway✗
Kong AI Gateway✓
Linux
Envoy AI Gateway✗
Kong AI Gateway✓
CLI
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Self-hosted
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
On-premise
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓
Hybrid
Envoy AI Gateway✓
Kong AI Gateway✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (6)
  • OpenAI
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Google Gemini
  • Anthropic
  • Mistral
  • cert-manager

Envoy AI Gateway

Leader
28 total - 22 not shared
  • Azure OpenAI
  • Google Vertex AI
  • Groq
  • Together AI
  • Cohere
  • DeepInfra
  • DeepSeek
  • Hunyuan
  • Tencent LLM Knowledge Engine
  • SambaNova
  • Grok
  • OIDC
  • GCP Vertex AI
  • Gemini
  • vLLM
  • MCP
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS STS
  • Entra ID
  • Google STS
  • Google Vertex
  • Model Context Protocol
Independently observed

Kong AI Gateway

28 total - 22 not shared
  • GCP Gemini
  • Azure AI
  • Databricks
  • Huggingface
  • Llama
  • AWS Bedrock Guardrails
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • Prometheus
  • Datadog
  • Grafana
  • Git
  • Google Cloud Gemini
  • Hugging Face
  • Docusign
  • Kafka
  • AWS Kinesis
  • Google Pub/Sub
  • RabbitMQ
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Redis
  • Microsoft Azure AI
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Envoy AI Gateway or Kong AI Gateway: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.