# Higress vs Kong AI Gateway

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Kong AI Gateway

| Attribute | Higress | Kong AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 48.4 (34% (low)) | 53.5 (36% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 4 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 9,195 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | An API gateway that routes requests to multiple language models and manages AI agents through pluggable extensions. Provided as open-source for self-hosting or as a managed cloud service with 99.95% availability guarantee. | Kong AI Gateway is a control platform that routes and governs all AI-related traffic—including language model requests, agent-to-agent communication, and model context protocol interactions—with unified security, monitoring, and compliance enforcement across an organization's AI infrastructure. |
| features.capabilities | - | `{"caching":"semantic","open_source":true,"rate_limiting":true,"automatic_failover":true,"budget_spend_controls":true,"openai_compatible_api":true,"virtual_key_management":true,"request_cost_observability":true,"mit_or_apache_permissive_oss_license":true,"pii_redaction_and_data_masking_in_flight":true,"custom_rate_limiting_by_user_or_tenant_id":true,"auto_fallback_routing_on_rate_limit_or_downtime":true,"organization_wide_cost_tracking_and_chargebacks":true,"semantic_caching_for_repeat_queries_and_cost_savings":true}` |
| integrations.count | 7 | 16 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Claude"},{"name":"DeepSeek"},{"name":"Azure OpenAI"},{"name":"Aliyun Dashscope"},{"name":"Aliyun DashVector"},{"name":"Doubao"}]` | `[{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Anthropic"},{"name":"AWS Bedrock"},{"name":"GCP Gemini"},{"name":"Azure AI"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"Mistral"},{"name":"Huggingface"},{"name":"Llama"},{"name":"AWS Bedrock Guardrails"},{"name":"Azure Content Safety"},{"name":"Google Cloud Model Armor"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"Git"},{"name":"CertManager"},{"name":"Google Cloud Gemini"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"Docusign"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"AWS Kinesis"},{"name":"Google Pub/Sub"},{"name":"RabbitMQ"}]` |
| language.primary | Go | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"CN","primaryMarkets":["CN","US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","summary":"Free open-source version and commercial cloud service offerings","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://higress.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-20T08:22:51.355Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://konghq.com/products/kong-ai-gateway","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T13:45:38.191Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.transparent | no | no |
| release.cadence_days | 19 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.2.4","date":"2026-08-13T23:49:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.2.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.2.3","date":"2026-06-25T02:58:49Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.2.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.2.2","date":"2026-05-26T01:41:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.2.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.2.1","date":"2026-04-09T12:23:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.11","date":"2026-02-22T12:29:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.2.0","date":"2026-02-11T09:48:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.10","date":"2026-02-03T11:30:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.9","date":"2025-11-13T11:52:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.9-rc.1","date":"2025-10-09T09:33:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.9-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.8","date":"2025-09-21T07:34:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.7","date":"2025-09-01T07:59:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.6","date":"2025-07-30T13:53:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.5","date":"2025-07-02T10:04:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.5-rc.1","date":"2025-06-18T01:17:20Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.5-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.4","date":"2025-06-10T14:24:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.3","date":"2025-05-09T07:31:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.2","date":"2025-04-29T12:55:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.2-rc.1","date":"2025-04-28T15:03:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.2-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.1","date":"2025-04-18T08:48:03Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/higress-group/higress/releases/tag/v2.1.1-rc.1","date":"2025-04-14T13:13:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.1.1-rc.1"}]` | - |
| reliability.sla_pct | 99.95 | - |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Falibaba%2Fhigress%2Fplugins%2Fwasm-go&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | - |

## Capabilities (Llm Gateways)

| Capability | Higress | Kong AI Gateway |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Capabilities** |  |  |
| Openai compatible API | - | ✓ |
| Automatic failover | - | ✓ |
| Routing strategy | - | - |
| Caching | - | Semantic |
| Virtual key management | - | ✓ |
| Budget spend controls | - | ✓ |
| Rate limiting | - | ✓ |
| Guardrails moderation | - | - |
| Request cost observability | - | ✓ |
| Streaming support | - | - |
| Deployment model | - | - |
| Open source | - | ✓ |
| Pricing model | - | - |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:41:43.074Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*