KO
Kong AI Gateway
AI plugins on a mature API gateway platform
Enterprise AI gatewayResearch complete
Company overview
Kong AI Gateway extends Kong Gateway with AI-specific plugins covering prompt guards, response handling, PII sanitisation, semantic caching, routing and rate limiting, deployable wherever Kong runs.
Ideal customer: API platform and infrastructure teams with an existing Kong or Kubernetes footprint
- Applying prompt and response guards as gateway plugins
- Semantic caching and rate limiting for LLM traffic
- Routing across multiple model providers from one proxy
GateYourAI verdict
Kong's advantage is that AI controls are plugins on a data plane many organisations already operate, with self-hosted and Kubernetes deployment as first-class options. Per-plugin verification against Kong's developer documentation is queued before we mark individual controls as available.
Best for: Platform teams already running Kong that want AI policy in the same data plane. Read how we assess platforms.
Security capabilities
A capability is marked available only when an official page or documentation says so. “Not publicly documented” means we could not find it — not that the vendor lacks it.
| Capability | Status | Verification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt-injection detectionIdentifies attempts to override system instructions in prompts or tool output.Provided by the AI Prompt Guard plugin. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Prompt-injection blockingBlocks the request before it reaches the model, rather than only logging it.Prompt Guard rejects matching requests at the gateway. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Jailbreak detectionDetects known jailbreak and guardrail-evasion patterns. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| PII detectionIdentifies personal information in prompts or responses.AI Sanitizer / PII plugin. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| PII redactionMasks or removes personal information before it leaves the gateway.Sensitive values can be redacted before the request is forwarded. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Secret & credential scanningDetects API keys, tokens and credentials in prompts or output. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Input inspectionInspects outbound requests before they reach the model. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Output inspectionInspects inbound model responses before they reach the application.Response guarding is available as a plugin. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Content moderationClassifies harmful or policy-violating content. Not equivalent to injection defense.Content-safety plugin integration. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Policy enforcementConfigurable rules applied per route, team, key or environment.Capabilities are configured as per-route plugins. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Agent & tool controlsConstrains tool calls, autonomous actions and agent permissions. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| MCP securityControls or inspects Model Context Protocol server traffic.MCP traffic can be proxied and governed. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Audit logsDurable, reviewable record of requests and policy decisions. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Access controlsRoles, teams, keys and scoped permissions.Consumers, keys and RBAC from Kong Gateway. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
Cost-optimization capabilities
Token reduction, avoided calls, cheaper-model routing, budgets and reporting are tracked separately because they are not interchangeable.
| Capability | Status | Verification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt compressionReduces the number of tokens actually sent to the model. | Not publicly documentedNot publicly documented. Not publicly documented. | Not publicly documented | — |
| Exact cachingReturns a stored response for a byte-identical request.AI Proxy caching. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Semantic cachingReturns a stored response for a semantically similar request using embeddings.AI Semantic Cache plugin. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Intelligent model routingChooses a model per request based on task, cost or performance.AI Proxy Advanced routes across providers and models. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Automatic fallbackRetries against an alternate model or provider on failure.Provider fallback on failure. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Load balancingDistributes traffic across keys, regions or providers.Load balancing across model targets. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Token budgetsHard or soft limits expressed in tokens.Token-based rate limiting acts as a token budget. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Dollar budgetsSpending limits expressed in currency. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Rate limitsRequest throttling. Throttling is not the same as token reduction.AI Rate Limiting Advanced plugin, including token-based limits. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Cost attributionAttributes spend to teams, keys, users or features.Usage is reported per consumer and route; dedicated cost attribution not stated. | LimitedLimited. Partially documented. | Partially documented | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Cost analyticsDashboards and reporting on token and dollar usage.AI analytics and observability. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Savings reportingReports the spend avoided by compression, caching or routing. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
Supported models and deployment options
Self-hosted, Kubernetes and managed options associated with Kong Gateway. Verification pending.
| Capability | Status | Verification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAISupports OpenAI models. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| AnthropicSupports Anthropic models. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Google GeminiSupports Google Gemini models. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| AWS BedrockSupports AWS Bedrock as a provider. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Azure OpenAISupports Azure OpenAI deployments. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Open-source modelsSupports open-weight models or self-hosted inference endpoints.Ollama, Hugging Face and self-hosted endpoints. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| SaaS deploymentVendor-hosted managed service.Konnect managed control plane. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| VPC / private cloudDeployable inside a customer cloud account.Kubernetes and cloud deployment. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| On-premiseDeployable in a customer data centre. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Self-hostedCustomer runs and operates the gateway themselves. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| Open-source optionSource code published under an open-source licence.Kong Gateway is open source; some AI plugins are enterprise-only. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| APIProgrammatic API for configuration or traffic. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
| SDKOfficial client libraries. | AvailableAvailable. Verified from official documentation. | Verified from official documentation | Kong AI Gateway developer documentation |
Pricing status
Verification pending. Kong publishes plan tiers; AI Gateway specifics not yet verified.
| Capability | Status | Verification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public pricingList pricing published on the vendor website. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Free tierA permanently free usage tier. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Free trialA time-limited or credit-limited trial. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Enterprise planA named enterprise tier. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
| Contact sales requiredPricing requires contacting the vendor. | Verification pendingVerification pending. Verification pending. | Verification pending | — |
Strengths
- Runs in the same data plane as existing API traffic
- Self-hosted and Kubernetes deployment are core to the platform
Limitations
- AI capabilities are spread across plugins that must be configured individually
- Some capabilities are enterprise-tier only and need contract-level confirmation
Alternatives to Kong AI Gateway
PortkeyTeams that want an open-source gateway with guardrails and spend controlsF5 AI GatewayLarge enterprises standardising AI traffic policy on existing F5 infrastructureTrueFoundry AI GatewayEnterprises that need gateway capabilities inside their own cloud boundary
You can also compare Kong AI Gateway against up to three other platforms, or read the AI Gate pillar page.
Sources
- Kong AI Gateway product page Kong Inc. · Official product page · Accessed 2026-07-30Queued for detailed capability extraction.
- Kong AI Gateway developer documentation Kong Inc. · Official documentation · Accessed 2026-07-30Primary source of truth for per-plugin capability marks.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-30
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