Comparison

Envoy Gateway vs Kong Gateway

No clear leader: Kong Gateway (53.8) and Envoy Gateway (52.4) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Envoy Gateway52
Kong Gateway54
Score
vioscaleAI score
Envoy Gateway52 / 100medium · 53%
Kong Gateway54 / 100medium · 74%
Pricing
Free tier
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓
Model
Envoy Gatewaycommercial
Kong Gatewayopen_source
Price level
Envoy Gatewayfree
Kong Gatewayfree
Transparent
Envoy Gateway–
Kong Gateway✗
Integrations
Count
Envoy Gateway4
Kong Gateway12
Reliability
Sla pct
Envoy Gateway–
Kong Gateway99.99
Status page
Envoy Gateway–
Kong Gateway✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Envoy Gateway0
Kong Gateway1
Github stars
Envoy Gateway3,078
Kong Gateway44,260
Activity
Commits last 30d
Envoy Gateway86
Kong Gateway10
Release
Cadence days
Envoy Gateway8
Kong Gateway42
History
Envoy Gateway20 items
Kong Gateway20 items
License
Spdx
Envoy GatewayApache-2.0
Kong GatewayApache-2.0
Language
Primary
Envoy GatewayGo
Kong GatewayLua
Market
Availability
Envoy Gateway–
Content
Faq
Envoy Gateway5 items
Kong Gateway8 items

Capabilities

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

Deployment
Hosting
Envoy GatewaySelf-hosted only
Kong GatewayCloud + self-hosted
Kubernetes-native
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓
Traffic
Rate limiting
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓
Request/response transformation
Envoy Gateway-
Kong Gateway✓
Security
OAuth2 / OIDC / JWT
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓
Mutual TLS
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓
Protocols
GraphQL gateway
Envoy Gateway-
Kong Gateway-
gRPC support
Envoy Gateway-
Kong Gateway-
Delivery
Developer portal
Envoy Gateway-
Kong Gateway✓
Monetization
Envoy Gateway-
Kong Gateway✓
Ecosystem
Plugin ecosystem
Envoy Gateway-
Kong GatewayExtensive
Insight
Observability
Envoy Gateway✓
Kong Gateway✓

What each one is

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

Envoy Gateway

Provides a gateway for deploying Envoy Proxy in various environments—either standalone or on Kubernetes clusters—while extending Kubernetes Gateway API functionality.

Independently observed

Kong Gateway

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.

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 Gateway

Open source
as of verify ↗

Kong Gateway

Open source

Open source core; Kong Konnect cloud platform offers free trial and commercial subscriptions

as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

Integrations

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

In common (1)
  • OpenAI

Envoy Gateway

4 total - 3 not shared
  • KEDA
  • k0rdent
  • OIDC
Independently observed

Kong Gateway

19 total - 18 not shared
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • Anthropic
  • Llama 3
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Git
  • Stripe
  • Twilio
  • Llama
  • DocuSign
  • Insomnia
  • Apache Kafka
  • Redis
  • Prometheus
  • cert-manager
  • AWS Lambda
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Envoy Gateway or Kong 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.