# Kong Gateway vs Traefik

| Attribute | Kong Gateway | Traefik |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 53.8 (74% (medium)) | 56 (43% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 10 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 1 | 52 |
| adoption.github_stars | 44,260 | 65,044 |
| content.faq | `[{"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}]` | `[{"answer":"A gateway platform that automatically discovers and routes traffic for microservices by integrating with orchestrators and service registries. It provides comprehensive API management, authentication, rate limiting, observability, and multi-cluster control across on-premises, cloud, and containerized environments. It is indexed under API Gateways.","source":"https://traefik.io/pricing","question":"What is Traefik?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Traefik is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the MIT licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://traefik.io/pricing","question":"Is Traefik free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Traefik supports the web, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://traefik.io/pricing","question":"What platforms does Traefik support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Traefik can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid, air-gapped and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://traefik.io/pricing","question":"Can Traefik be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 20 integrations for Traefik, including Docker, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Rancher, Amazon ECS, HashiCorp Nomad and Azure Service Fabric, plus 12 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://traefik.io/pricing","question":"What does Traefik integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Traefik is published under the MIT 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/traefik/traefik","question":"Is Traefik open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | 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. |
| features.capabilities | `{"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}` | `{"mtls":true,"hosting":"both","k8s_native":true,"oauth_oidc":true,"grpc_support":true,"http_caching":true,"monetization":true,"clustering_ha":true,"observability":true,"rate_limiting":true,"tls_termination":true,"developer_portal":true,"plugin_ecosystem":"extensive","hot_config_reload":true,"automatic_https_acme":true,"identity_aware_proxy":true,"request_transformation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 12 | 9 |
| integrations.list | `[{"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}]` | `[{"name":"Docker"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"Docker Swarm"},{"name":"Consul"},{"name":"Etcd"},{"name":"Rancher"},{"name":"Amazon ECS"},{"name":"HashiCorp Nomad"},{"name":"Azure Service Fabric"},{"name":"HashiCorp Vault"},{"name":"Let's Encrypt"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"Statsd"},{"name":"InfluxDB"},{"name":"Argo CD"},{"name":"OpenAPI"},{"name":"ModSecurity"},{"name":"Mesos"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","native":true,"category":"observability","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Oracle Cloud Infrastructure","native":true,"category":"cloud"},{"name":"Red Hat OpenShift","native":true,"category":"kubernetes_platform","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Vault","native":false,"category":"secrets_management","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Treblle","native":false,"category":"observability","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Open Policy Agent","native":false,"category":"authorization","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Red Hat Marketplace","native":false,"category":"marketplace","direction":"outbound"}]` |
| language.primary | Lua | Go |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"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"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Traefik Proxy","features":["Services auto-discovery","HTTP/2/3, TCP, UDP, gRPC, WebSockets","Real-time metrics and distributed tracing","Canary deployments","OpenTelemetry support","Ingress-view dashboard"],"description":"Open source reverse proxy and ingress controller"}],"freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://traefik.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-09-07T08:28:11.076Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| 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"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.13","date":"2026-09-04T12:40:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.57","date":"2026-09-04T12:23:52Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.57"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.12","date":"2026-08-26T13:42:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.56","date":"2026-08-26T13:40:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.56"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.11","date":"2026-08-19T06:44:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.55","date":"2026-08-18T08:56:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.55"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.10","date":"2026-07-31T12:49:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.25","date":"2026-07-31T12:34:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.6.25"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.54","date":"2026-07-31T12:18:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.54"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.9","date":"2026-07-24T12:47:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.24","date":"2026-07-24T12:33:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.6.24"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.53","date":"2026-07-24T12:19:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.53"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.8","date":"2026-07-15T12:51:10Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.7","date":"2026-07-08T15:39:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.23","date":"2026-07-08T14:31:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.6.23"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.52","date":"2026-07-08T13:09:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.52"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.6","date":"2026-06-30T12:21:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.6.22","date":"2026-06-30T09:58:45Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.6.22"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v2.11.51","date":"2026-06-30T09:07:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.11.51"},{"url":"https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/tag/v3.7.5","date":"2026-06-10T15:00:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.5"}]` |
| reliability.sla_pct | 99.99 | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.certifications | - | `[{"name":"FIPS 140-3","status":"active"},{"name":"FIPS 140-2","status":"active"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 7.5 | 6.4 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.trust_center | https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/trust-what-youre-shipping-with-insomnia-v12 | https://traefik.io |
| 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}` | `{"count":56,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Ftraefik%2Ftraefik%2Fv2&per_page=100","last_12m":32,"max_severity":"CRITICAL"}` |

## Capabilities (API Gateways)

| Capability | Kong Gateway | Traefik |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | 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 | Extensive |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Observability | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:15:14.174Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*