vioscaleAI
Comparison

Kong Gateway vs Traefik

No clear leader: Traefik (56.0) and Kong Gateway (53.8) 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.

Kong Gateway full profile →Traefik full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Kong Gateway54
Traefik56
Score
vioscaleAI score
Kong Gateway54 / 100medium · 74%
Traefik56 / 100low · 43%
Pricing
Free tier
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik✓
Model
Kong Gatewayopen_source
Traefikcommercial
Price level
Kong Gatewayfree
Traefiklow
Transparent
Kong Gateway✗
Traefik✗
Integrations
Count
Kong Gateway12
Traefik9
Security
Certifications
Kong Gateway–
TraefikFIPS 140-3, FIPS 140-2
Disclosure policy
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik–
Gdpr
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik–
Pci
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik–
Scorecard
Kong Gateway7.5
Traefik6.4
Soc2
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik–
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Kong Gateway99.99
Traefik–
Status page
Kong Gateway✓
Traefik✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Kong Gateway1
Traefik52
Github stars
Kong Gateway44,260
Traefik65,044
Activity
Commits last 30d
Kong Gateway10
Traefik100
Release
Cadence days
Kong Gateway42
Traefik–
History
Kong Gateway20 items
Traefik20 items
License
Spdx
Kong GatewayApache-2.0
TraefikMIT
Language
Primary
Kong GatewayLua
TraefikGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Kong Gateway8 items
Traefik6 items

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

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

Traefik

A cloud-native application proxy and API gateway that provides centralized management for Kubernetes workloads, VM-based services, and API endpoints—including AI models and agents—through a single programmable gateway deployable on-premises or with any cloud provider.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Kong Gateway

Open source

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

as of verify ↗

Traefik

HybridFree tier
  • Traefik ProxyFree
    • Services auto-discovery
    • HTTP/2/3, TCP, UDP, gRPC, WebSockets
    • Real-time metrics and distributed tracing
    • Canary deployments
    • OpenTelemetry support
    • +1 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

Integrations

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

In common (2)
  • Kubernetes
  • Prometheus

Kong Gateway

19 total - 17 not shared
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Llama 3
  • Helm
  • Git
  • Stripe
  • Twilio
  • Llama
  • DocuSign
  • Insomnia
  • Apache Kafka
  • Redis
  • cert-manager
  • AWS Lambda
Independently observed

Traefik

26 total - 24 not shared
  • Docker
  • Docker Swarm
  • Consul
  • Etcd
  • Rancher
  • Amazon ECS
  • HashiCorp Nomad
  • Azure Service Fabric
  • HashiCorp Vault
  • Let's Encrypt
  • Datadog
  • Statsd
  • InfluxDB
  • Argo CD
  • OpenAPI
  • ModSecurity
  • Mesos
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
  • Red Hat OpenShift
  • Vault
  • Treblle
  • Open Policy Agent
  • Red Hat Marketplace
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Kong Gateway or Traefik: 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.