# Gloo Gateway vs Kong Gateway

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Kong Gateway

| Attribute | Gloo Gateway | Kong Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 48.3 (32% (low)) | 53.8 (74% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 10 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 1 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 44,260 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Gloo Gateway functions as a centralized controller for API traffic in microservices architectures, handling authentication, observability, routing, and security governance across Kubernetes-based systems. It is indexed under API Gateways.","source":"https://www.solo.io/products/gloo-gateway/","question":"What is Gloo Gateway?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Gloo Gateway does not publish its prices. Pricing is quoted on request, across 2 plans (Open Source and Solo Enterprise), so the figure depends on your seat count and requirements. We record this as a pricing-transparency signal rather than guessing a number. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.solo.io/pricing","question":"How much does Gloo Gateway cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Gloo Gateway supports Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.solo.io/products/gloo-gateway/","question":"What platforms does Gloo Gateway support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Gloo Gateway can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://www.solo.io/products/gloo-gateway/","question":"Can Gloo Gateway be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 5 integrations for Gloo Gateway, including MCP, Istio, Kubernetes Gateway API, Backstage and LLMs. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.solo.io/products/gloo-gateway/","question":"What does Gloo Gateway integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 for Gloo Gateway. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Gloo Gateway not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://trust.solo.io","question":"What security certifications does Gloo Gateway have?","confidence":0.7}]` | `[{"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,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A cloud-native API gateway built on Envoy that enables organizations to route, transform, and secure API traffic across multiple protocols. It provides enterprise security controls, developer portals for API discovery, and monetization capabilities for managing APIs as revenue-generating assets. | 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,"oauth_oidc":true,"grpc_support":true,"monetization":true,"observability":true,"graphql_gateway":true,"developer_portal":true,"plugin_ecosystem":"limited","request_transformation":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 | 9 | 12 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"MCP","native":true,"direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Istio","native":true,"category":"service mesh","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Kubernetes Gateway API","native":true,"direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Backstage","native":false,"category":"devops"},{"name":"LLMs","native":true,"category":"ai","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Kubernetes","native":true,"category":"infrastructure","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"AWS Lambda","category":"serverless","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"AWS EKS","category":"infrastructure","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"AWS API Gateway","category":"api-gateway","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"OpenAPI","category":"documentation","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"OAuth 2.0","native":true,"category":"auth"},{"name":"OIDC","native":true,"category":"auth"},{"name":"JWT","native":true,"category":"auth"}]` | `[{"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 | - | Lua |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Open Source","summary":"Free, perpetual license","features":["Request routing by path, header, method, query parameter, host","Kubernetes Gateway API support","Traffic splitting and transformation","Multi-protocol support: REST, gRPC, GraphQL, WebSocket","Active community with regular releases"],"contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Solo Enterprise","summary":"Contact sales for pricing","features":["24x7 Support SLA with guaranteed response times","N-3 Long Term Support with security patches and bug fixes","FIPS Compliant Images","Private Slack Channel with white-glove support"],"contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free open source forever. Enterprise support available.","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.solo.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T17:04:52.281Z"}` | `{"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 | quote | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | unknown | free |
| pricing.transparent | no | no |
| release.cadence_days | - | 42 |
| release.history | - | `[{"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.certifications | `[{"name":"FedRAMP","status":"in_progress"}]` | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | - | 7.5 |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |
| security.trust_center | https://www.solo.io/blog/compliance-zero-trust-istio-ambient-mesh | 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%2FKong%2Fkong&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (API Gateways)

| Capability | Gloo Gateway | 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 | Limited | Extensive |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Observability | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-22T01:38:22.874Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*