Comparison

Kong Gateway vs Tyk

No clear leader: Tyk (54.5) 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.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Kong Gateway54
Tyk55
Score
vioscaleAI score
Kong Gateway54 / 100medium · 74%
Tyk55 / 100high · 75%
Pricing
Free tier
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
Model
Kong Gatewayopen_source
Price level
Kong Gatewayfree
Tyklow
Transparent
Kong Gateway✗
Tyk✗
Integrations
Count
Kong Gateway12
Tyk5
Reliability
Sla pct
Kong Gateway99.99
Tyk–
Status page
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Kong Gateway1
Tyk35
Github stars
Kong Gateway44,260
Activity
Commits last 30d
Kong Gateway10
Tyk22
Release
Cadence days
Kong Gateway42
Tyk11
History
Kong Gateway20 items
License
Spdx
Kong GatewayApache-2.0
Tyk–
Language
Primary
Kong GatewayLua
TykGo
Content
Faq
Kong Gateway8 items

Capabilities

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

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

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

Tyk

An open-source, self-hosted or cloud-managed API gateway and management platform that provides centralized governance, rate limiting, authentication, PII protection, and observability for APIs and AI agent traffic across multiple protocols and deployment modes.

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 ↗

Tyk

HybridFree tier

Open source (MPL v2.0) with commercial licensing available

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✓
Tyk✓
Linux
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
CLI
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
Self-hosted
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✓
Hybrid
Kong Gateway✓
Tyk✗

Integrations

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

In common (1)
  • Kubernetes

Kong Gateway

19 total - 18 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
  • Prometheus
  • cert-manager
  • AWS Lambda
Independently observed

Tyk

8 total - 7 not shared
  • OpenAPI
  • OpenTelemetry
  • GraphQL
  • Docker
  • OpenAPI/Swagger
  • Kafka
  • MQTT
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Kong Gateway or Tyk: 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.