# Kong Mesh vs Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Kong Mesh

| Attribute | Kong Mesh | Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 59.3 (39% (low)) | 50.6 (26% (low)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Kong Inc. is the leading AI connectivity company, delivering the ultra-low-latency infrastructure enterprises need to secure, govern, and scale both traditional APIs and complex agentic AI workloads. Through a single unified control plane, Kong seamlessly unifies API management, service mesh, and AI gateway infrastructure to transform unmanaged traffic risks into a controlled, production-ready enterprise capability. | - |
| features.capabilities | `{"vm_support":true,"multicluster":true,"automatic_mtls":true,"fault_injection":true,"built_in_observability":true}` | `{"proxy":"envoy","data_plane":"sidecar","multicluster":true,"automatic_mtls":true,"traffic_splitting":true,"commercial_support":true,"built_in_observability":true}` |
| integrations.count | - | 8 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"Istio"},{"name":"Envoy"},{"name":"Kiali"},{"name":"Red Hat Connectivity Link"},{"name":"Red Hat OpenShift Observability"},{"name":"cert-manager Operator for Red Hat OpenShift"},{"name":"Red Hat OpenShift Gitops"},{"name":"Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization"}]` |
| platform.support | - | `{"cli":true}` |
| pricing.model | commercial | commercial |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |

## Capabilities (Service Mesh)

| Capability | Kong Mesh | Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Data plane | - | Sidecar |
| Proxy | - | Envoy |
| **Security** |  |  |
| Automatic mutual TLS | ✓ | ✓ |
| SPIFFE / SPIRE identity | - | - |
| **Traffic** |  |  |
| Traffic splitting / canary | - | ✓ |
| Fault injection / resilience | ✓ | - |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Multi-cluster federation | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Portability** |  |  |
| VM support (beyond Kubernetes) | ✓ | - |
| **Observability** |  |  |
| Built-in observability | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| Gateway API / GAMMA support | - | - |
| **Extensibility** |  |  |
| WASM extensibility | - | - |
| **Compliance** |  |  |
| FIPS mode | - | - |
| **Ecosystem** |  |  |
| CNCF maturity | - | - |
| **Ops** |  |  |
| Commercial support / enterprise edition | - | ✓ |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T15:14:45.144Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*