Available worldwide
What is Kong Gateway?
Kong Gateway is a api gateways tool. The AI Connectivity Companyvisit the site
What Kong Gateway does
The capabilities that matter for api gateways, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Hosting
- Cloud + self-hosted
- Kubernetes-native
- ✓
- Rate limiting
- ✓
- Request/response transformation
- ✓
- OAuth2 / OIDC / JWT
- -
- Mutual TLS
- ✓
- GraphQL gateway
- -
- gRPC support
- -
- Developer portal
- ✓
- Monetization
- ✓
- Plugin ecosystem
- Limited
- Observability
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- Web
- Cloud / SaaS
- Self-hosted
Kong Gateway alternatives
Other api gateways we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- WSO2 API ManagerThe Open Platform to Control APIs, AI, and MCPmedium · 50%
- ZuploThe Unified Gateway for APIs, AI, and MCPmedium · 60%
- IBM API ConnectSeamlessly develop, manage, secure and socialize all your API types, wherever they live.low · 2%
- Traefiklow · 22%
- Tyklow · 44%
- EmissaryA Kubernetes-native API gateway for microservices built on the Envoy Proxylow · 24%
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Kong Gateway, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 50 | 0.17 | 8.8 | ✓ |
| Security Posture | 65 | 0.13 | 8.4 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 87 | 0.07 | 6.1 | ✓ |
| Release Cadence | 62 | 0.06 | 3.6 | ✓ |
| Github Stars | 88 | 0.03 | 2.5 | ✓ |
| Github Activity | 15 | 0.10 | 1.6 | ✓ |
| Price Level | 0 | 0.05 | 0.0 | - |
| Integrations | 0 | 0.09 | 0.0 | - |
| Package Downloads | 0 | 0.15 | 0.0 | - |
| Pricing Transparency | 0 | 0.07 | 0.0 | - |
| Stackoverflow Activity | 0 | 0.07 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Activity
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commits last 30d | 2 | mediumsource · 2026-07-31 · 65% |
Adoption
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Github stars | 43,894 | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 90% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | {"mtls":true,"hosting":"both","k8s_native":true,"monetization":true,"observability":true,"rate_limiting":true,"developer_portal":true,"plugin_ecosystem":"limited","request_transformation":true} | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |
Language
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Lua | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 90% |
License
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Spdx | Apache-2.0 | highsource · 2026-07-31 · 95% |
Market
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | {"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]} | highsource · 2026-08-05 · 75% |
Pricing
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Model | commercial | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |
Release
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence days | 68 | mediumsource · 2026-07-31 · 70% |
Reliability
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Status page | Yes | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |