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Alternatives to Kong AI Gateway

Kong AI Gateway

Gateway that governs LLM, MCP, and agent-to-agent traffic

Summary

Kong AI Gateway is a gateway that governs LLM, MCP, and agent-to-agent (A2A) traffic through one data plane, with shared authentication, observability, and policy.⁠Source 1 In the 2.x entity model, Kong manages the control plane in Konnect and you run the data plane nodes.⁠Source 1 Kong’s pricing also lists Kong-managed options: Dedicated Cloud Gateways and serverless AI gateways.⁠Source 2, Source 3, Source 4

By Blocks.ai teamLast checked

Where Kong AI Gateway sits

Six layers of running AI agents at a company, and what Kong AI Gateway’s own public sources say it covers. Each alternative below gets the same six layers as a strip.

Public sources · checked 2 October 2026
  • Offered
  • Preview
  • Not publicly documented

Kong AI Gateway

  • Build agents: Not publicly documented
  • Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
  • Identity and access: OfferedPer-agent allow or deny lists⁠Source 5
  • Registry and governance: PreviewKonnect Catalog agents⁠Source 6
  • Traffic between agents, tools, and models: OfferedGateway for LLM, MCP, A2A⁠Source 7
  • Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

How to read the strips

  1. 01Build agents
  2. 02Host and run agents
  3. 03Identity and access
  4. 04Registry and governance
  5. 05Traffic between agents, tools, and models
  6. 06Agents across organizations
  • Offered
  • Preview
  • You build it
  • Not included
  • Not publicly documented

Gateways, identity, and security

3 alternatives

The group Kong AI Gateway sits in, so listed first.

  • Cloudflare MCP server portals

    Cloudflare One feature that puts MCP servers behind one governed endpoint

    Where it sits⁠Source 8

    1. Build agents: Not publicly documented
    2. Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Identity provider or service token
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Centrally managed MCP servers
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Proxy for MCP tool calls
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    A portal that puts several MCP servers behind one HTTP endpoint; admins can choose which tools each portal exposes.⁠Source 8 Kong AI Gateway also governs LLM and A2A traffic.⁠Source 1

    Cloudflare MCP server portals vs Kong AI Gateway

  • Okta for AI Agents

    Okta offering that gives AI agents a first-class identity so organizations can discover, onboard, protect, and govern them

    Where it sits⁠Source 9, Source 10, Source 11

    1. Build agents: Not publicly documented
    2. Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Agent identity and credentials
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Universal Directory with human owners
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Preview, Agent Gateway for MCP tools
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    Okta says it gives AI agents a first-class identity.⁠Source 12 Admins register agents and set which resources each may access.⁠Source 13, Source 14 Kong AI Gateway sits in the traffic path, checking calls against policy.⁠Source 1

    Kong AI Gateway vs Okta for AI Agents

  • Zenity AI Agent Security & Governance Platform

    Security and governance platform for AI agents, aimed at security teams

    Where it sits⁠Source 15, Source 16

    1. Build agents: Not publicly documented
    2. Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
    3. Identity and access: Not publicly documented
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, AI Observability agent inventory
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Tool-call blocking for coding agents
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    A security platform.⁠Source 17 Zenity says it catalogs agents in SaaS platforms, custom builds, and on laptops, and can check agent actions against your rules.⁠Source 15, Source 18 Kong AI Gateway governs the traffic sent through it.⁠Source 1

    Kong AI Gateway vs Zenity

Agent control planes

5 alternatives

  • Blocks.ai

    Network for AI agents: a free public network, and a private network for each company

    Where it sits⁠Source 19, Source 20, Source 21, Source 22, Source 23

    1. Build agents: Not included, Use LangChain or CrewAI
    2. Host and run agents: Not included, You run your agent
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Machine identity per agent
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Private registry and Admin Console
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Private network for every agent
    6. Agents across organizations: Offered, Partners share only chosen agents

    Blocks.ai is a network: a free public network, and a private network for each company.⁠Source 22, Source 24 Blocks.ai doesn’t build or host agents.⁠Source 19, Source 20 It leaves the model to each agent; Kong proxies model calls.⁠Source 1, Source 25, Source 26

    Blocks.ai vs Kong AI Gateway

  • Microsoft Agent 365

    Microsoft 365 control plane to discover, manage, govern, and secure AI agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 27, Source 28, Source 29, Source 30, Source 31

    1. Build agents: Not included, Use your chosen framework
    2. Host and run agents: Not included, You host your agent
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Entra Agent ID
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agent registry in admin center
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Preview, Tooling Gateway for MCP servers
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    A Microsoft 365 control plane for agents, with one registry for Microsoft and non-Microsoft agents; it uses Microsoft Entra Agent ID for agent identities.⁠Source 29, Source 32, Source 33 Kong’s organization-wide agent inventory, in Konnect Catalog, is in beta.⁠Source 6

    Kong AI Gateway vs Microsoft Agent 365

  • MuleSoft Agent Fabric

    Control plane for agents, MCP servers, and APIs across platforms

    Where it sits⁠Source 34

    1. Build agents: Offered, Agent brokers in Agent Script
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, Agent brokers on CloudHub 2.0
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Omni Gateway authentication and authorization
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agent Registry in Anypoint Exchange
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Omni Gateway in request path
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    A control plane for agents, MCP servers, and APIs across platforms: scanners register agents found on supported platforms, and brokers orchestrate A2A-compliant agents.⁠Source 34, Source 35, Source 36 Kong’s organization-wide agent inventory is in beta.⁠Source 6

    Kong AI Gateway vs MuleSoft Agent Fabric

  • ServiceNow AI Control Tower

    What ServiceNow calls a central hub to discover, secure, govern, observe, and measure AI

    Where it sits⁠Source 37, Source 38, Source 39

    1. Build agents: Not publicly documented
    2. Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Scoped OAuth tokens (community docs)
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, AI inventory tied to CMDB
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, AI Gateway (community docs)
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    ServiceNow describes it as a central hub to discover, secure, govern, observe, and measure AI.⁠Source 38 Fully managing external AI assets needs a separate license.⁠Source 40 Kong checks traffic on 2.x data plane nodes you run.⁠Source 1

    Kong AI Gateway vs ServiceNow AI Control Tower

  • Workday Agent System of Record

    Workday system of record to find, add, register, configure, monitor, and manage AI agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 41, Source 42, Source 43

    1. Build agents: Not publicly documented
    2. Host and run agents: Not publicly documented
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Agent System User per agent
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agent Registry in Management Hub
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Agent Gateway for Workday APIs
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    Workday’s system of record to find, register, and manage AI agents, set up in each tenant.⁠Source 42, Source 44 Each agent has a unique Workday identity.⁠Source 41 Kong can check callers against allow or deny lists.⁠Source 5

    Kong AI Gateway vs Workday Agent System of Record

Platforms to build and run agents

6 alternatives

  • Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

    AWS platform for building, deploying, and operating AI agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 45, Source 46, Source 47, Source 48, Source 49

    1. Build agents: Offered, Harness managed agent loop
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, AgentCore Runtime
    3. Identity and access: Offered, AgentCore Identity workload identities
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, AWS Agent Registry with approvals
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, AgentCore Gateway
    6. Agents across organizations: Offered, Registry shared through AWS RAM

    AWS’s platform to build, deploy, and operate agents, with a serverless runtime that hosts them; AWS says it needs no infrastructure management.⁠Source 45 With Kong AI Gateway 2.x, you run the data plane nodes.⁠Source 1

    Amazon Bedrock AgentCore vs Kong AI Gateway

  • CrewAI AMP

    Platform for deploying, monitoring, and scaling CrewAI crews and agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 50, Source 51, Source 52, Source 53, Source 54, Source 55

    1. Build agents: Offered, Crew Studio visual editor
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, Managed infrastructure for crews
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Per-deployment allow lists
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agent Repositories
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Custom MCP server connections
    6. Agents across organizations: Preview, Public A2A agents

    A platform to build CrewAI crews, in code or in Crew Studio, and run them on managed infrastructure or, on Enterprise, in your own VPC.⁠Source 51, Source 56 Kong proxies calls to agents at their own URLs.⁠Source 5

    CrewAI AMP vs Kong AI Gateway

  • Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform

    Google Cloud platform to build, deploy, govern, and optimize AI agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 57, Source 58, Source 59, Source 60

    1. Build agents: Offered, Agent Studio low-code canvas
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, Agent Runtime
    3. Identity and access: Offered, SPIFFE-based Agent Identity
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agent Registry
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Agent Gateway
    6. Agents across organizations: Offered, Gateway calls to outside agents

    Google Cloud’s platform to build, deploy, and govern agents, which can run them on Agent Runtime, where its own Agent Gateway can govern their traffic.⁠Source 57, Source 58 Kong proxies to agents at their own URLs.⁠Source 5

    Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform vs Kong AI Gateway

  • IBM watsonx Orchestrate

    Agent management platform to build, deploy, orchestrate, and govern AI agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 61, Source 62, Source 63, Source 64, Source 65

    1. Build agents: Offered, Visual builder and ADK
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, Agents run on watsonx Orchestrate
    3. Identity and access: Preview, Agent identity
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Agentic Control Plane
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, A2A calls to agent endpoints
    6. Agents across organizations: Offered, Partner A2A agents in catalog

    IBM calls it an agent management platform to build, deploy, orchestrate, and govern agents.⁠Source 66 Kong says it governs A2A traffic without changing how agents are built.⁠Source 67

    IBM watsonx Orchestrate vs Kong AI Gateway

  • LangSmith

    Platform for observing, evaluating, and deploying agents

    Where it sits⁠Source 68, Source 69, Source 70, Source 71, Source 72

    1. Build agents: Offered, Fleet agent builder
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, LangSmith Deployment runtime
    3. Identity and access: Offered, Fleet per-agent permissions
    4. Registry and governance: Offered, Centralized registry in Deployment
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, Fleet forwards MCP tool calls
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    LangChain describes it as a platform for observing, evaluating, and deploying agents.⁠Source 73 It runs agents in LangChain’s cloud on Plus or above.⁠Source 69 Kong gives one API to major LLM providers.⁠Source 26

    Kong AI Gateway vs LangSmith

  • n8n

    Platform for AI agents and workflows you can see and control, built visually or with code

    Where it sits⁠Source 74, Source 75, Source 76, Source 77

    1. Build agents: Offered, LangChain-based AI Agent node
    2. Host and run agents: Offered, Your infrastructure or n8n’s
    3. Identity and access: Not publicly documented
    4. Registry and governance: Preview, Agents stored in projects
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: Offered, MCP client for external tools
    6. Agents across organizations: Not publicly documented

    n8n says you build AI agents and workflows in it, visually or with code, on n8n Cloud or self-hosted.⁠Source 75, Source 78 Kong says it governs A2A traffic without changing how agents are built.⁠Source 67

    Kong AI Gateway vs n8n

Build it yourself

1 alternative

Not a product: your own team assembles the pieces.

  • Build it yourself (DIY)

    Building agent connections and controls in-house from open protocols, existing infrastructure, and open-source tools

    Where it sits⁠Source 79, Source 80, Source 81, Source 82, Source 83, Source 84

    1. Build agents: You build it, Open-source frameworks like ADK
    2. Host and run agents: You build it, Self-hosted, like LangGraph
    3. Identity and access: You build it, Your own identity provider
    4. Registry and governance: You build it, Your own agent registry
    5. Traffic between agents, tools, and models: You build it, Your gateway and service mesh
    6. Agents across organizations: You build it, A2A with API management

    You connect and govern agents yourself, with open protocols such as MCP and A2A that leave authorization logic to the implementer.⁠Source 85, Source 86 Kong AI Gateway can enforce a per-agent allow or deny list.⁠Source 5

    DIY vs Kong AI Gateway

Questions buyers ask

Does Kong AI Gateway keep a registry of every agent?

In 2.x, each agent you add is an AI Agent entity, scoped to one gateway instance.⁠Source 1, Source 5 Kong’s organization-wide inventory, Agents in Konnect Catalog, is in beta; Kong says not to use it in production.⁠Source 6 In the beta, agents are added by pasting their A2A card.⁠Source 6

How is Kong AI Gateway priced?

Kong’s AI Management Plus plan starts at $25 a month plus usage; Enterprise pricing is custom, billed annually.⁠Source 2 On Plus, a hybrid AI gateway control plane is $200 a month, a Dedicated Cloud Gateway control plane $500, and a serverless one $25.⁠Source 2

Can Kong AI Gateway manage agents built elsewhere?

Kong AI Gateway proxies to each agent at its own URL, and Kong says it governs A2A traffic without changing how agents are built.⁠Source 5, Source 67 Requests to agents that don’t use A2A pass through as plain HTTP.⁠Source 5

Can Kong AI Gateway be fully self-hosted?

Not with the 2.x AI entities: they run hybrid, with a Konnect-managed control plane and data plane nodes you run.⁠Source 1 Fully self-hosted AI gateways are part of Kong’s separate Gateway Enterprise offering.⁠Source 2 On self-hosted Kong Gateway, the same capabilities are configured with AI plugins instead.⁠Source 87

How we compare

Read the full method

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We re-check every fact at least every 90 days. This page was last checked .

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Sources

90 public sources, each with the date we checked it. Every one opens in a new tab.

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  2. Source 2: Kong Pricing & Plans Kong · checked Back:abcd

  3. Source 3: Dedicated Cloud Gateways - Kong Docs Kong · checked Back to text

  4. Source 4: Serverless Gateways - Kong Docs Kong · checked Back to text

  5. Source 5: AI Agents - Kong AI Gateway docs Kong · checked Back:abcdefgh

  6. Source 6: Agents in Catalog - Kong Docs Kong · checked Back:abcde

  7. Source 7: Kong AI Gateway product page Kong · checked Back to text

  8. Source 8: MCP server portals · Cloudflare One docs Cloudflare · checked Back:ab

  9. Source 9: Add AI agents manually (Okta Help Center) Okta · checked Back to text

  10. Source 10: Okta for AI Agents (product page) Okta · checked Back to text

  11. Source 11: Agent Gateway (Okta Help Center) Okta · checked Back to text

  12. Source 12: Okta brings first-class identity to AI agents with Agent SSO Okta · checked Back to text

  13. Source 13: Add and register AI agents (Okta Help Center) Okta · checked Back to text

  14. Source 14: AI agent resource connections (Okta Help Center) Okta · checked Back to text

  15. Source 15: AI Observability | See Every Agent, Know What it Touches | Zenity Zenity · checked Back:ab

  16. Source 16: Coding and Personal Agents | Zenity Zenity · checked Back to text

  17. Source 17: AWS Marketplace: Zenity Zenity · checked Back to text

  18. Source 18: Runtime Boundaries | The Runtime Boundary for Autonomous AI | Zenity Zenity · checked Back to text

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  24. Source 24: Pricing Blocks.ai · checked Back:ab

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  45. Source 45: Overview - Amazon Bedrock AgentCore (Developer Guide) AWS · checked Back:ab

  46. Source 46: Provide identity and credential management for agent applications with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity AWS · checked Back to text

  47. Source 47: AWS Agent Registry: Discover and manage agents, tools, and resources AWS · checked Back to text

  48. Source 48: HTTP passthrough targets - AgentCore Gateway AWS · checked Back to text

  49. Source 49: Sharing a registry across accounts with AWS RAM AWS · checked Back to text

  50. Source 50: Crew Studio CrewAI · checked Back to text

  51. Source 51: CrewAI AMP (platform docs introduction) CrewAI · checked Back:ab

  52. Source 52: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) CrewAI · checked Back to text

  53. Source 53: Agent Repositories CrewAI · checked Back to text

  54. Source 54: Custom MCP Servers CrewAI · checked Back to text

  55. Source 55: A2A on AMP CrewAI · checked Back to text

  56. Source 56: Pricing | CrewAI CrewAI · checked Back to text

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  58. Source 58: Agent Gateway overview Google · checked Back:ab

  59. Source 59: Agent Identity overview Google · checked Back to text

  60. Source 60: Agent Registry overview Google · checked Back to text

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  65. Source 65: Partner A2A (Agent2Agent) agents IBM · checked Back to text

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  68. Source 68: No-code agents with LangSmith Fleet LangChain · checked Back to text

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  72. Source 72: Remote MCP servers LangChain · checked Back to text

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  74. Source 74: LangChain in n8n n8n · checked Back to text

  75. Source 75: AI Workflow Automation Platform - n8n n8n · checked Back:ab

  76. Source 76: Build and manage agents n8n · checked Back to text

  77. Source 77: MCP Client Tool n8n · checked Back to text

  78. Source 78: Choose how to use n8n n8n · checked Back to text

  79. Source 79: google/adk-python README (GitHub) github.com · checked Back to text

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  81. Source 81: Integrating with Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Keycloak keycloak.org · checked Back to text

  82. Source 82: Agent Discovery - A2A Protocol a2a-protocol.org · checked Back to text

  83. Source 83: Designing MCP Gateway Uber's MCP Management Platform - Uber Blog uber.com · checked Back to text

  84. Source 84: Enterprise Features - A2A Protocol a2a-protocol.org · checked Back to text

  85. Source 85: Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol Specification a2a-protocol.org · checked Back to text

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  87. Source 87: Configure Kong AI Gateway on-prem - Kong Docs Kong · checked Back to text

  88. Source 88: Network requirements Blocks.ai · checked Back to text

  89. Source 89: Solutions: Agent sprawl Blocks.ai · checked Back to text

  90. Source 90: Solutions: Partner networks Blocks.ai · checked Back to text