A Productized AI Gateway, Not a Suite of Plugins to Compose
WSO2 ships AI Gateway, MCP Hub, and AI Workspace as one unified component. Kong delivers equivalent capabilities through a set of AI plugins configured per route, most of them enterprise-licensed.
| Pillar |
|
Kong AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Head-to-head snapshot, by pillar | ||
| Agentic ready | Unified MCP Hub with llms.txt and AI-readiness scoring built into the IDE, so agents can discover and call APIs without a human in the loop. | MCP plugins and Agent Gateway are GA, but Enterprise-tier and Konnect-cloud-bound; no design-time AI governance in Insomnia. |
| Universal governance | One control plane governs API, AI, and MCP traffic, including WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, and Envoy gateways. | Governance stays Kong-centric; most guardrails, identity, and MCP access-control features require the separate Enterprise AI License. |
| Freedom and flexibility | 100% Apache 2.0 core, deployable as SaaS, hybrid, self-hosted, or air-gapped, with modular components you can adopt independently. | Open-core model; several AI capabilities (MCP Registry, AI Manager, Metering & Billing, Event Gateway) run only in Konnect cloud. |
| Monetization | Native, Moesif-powered analytics, FinOps, and monetization, battle-tested at Siemens, You.com, and Oxford University Press. | Konnect Metering & Billing (built on OpenMeter, acquired September 2025) covers basic metering but lacks product analytics and automated chargeback. |
| Capability | Benefit |
|
Kong AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic ready | |||
| Agent-ready MCP Hub | Agents find and call your APIs without a human in the loop | MCP Hub on a fully customizable portal, llms.txt entry point, and spec endpoints agents can read without auth. Auto-generates MCP servers from existing API specs in a few clicks. | Dev Portal added MCP servers for agent consumption and the MCP Registry is in tech preview, Konnect cloud only. ai-mcp-proxy converts REST APIs to MCP tools (Enterprise tier). No llms.txt. |
| AI-readiness governance | Catch APIs that agents cannot use before they ship, inside the IDE | AI readiness scoring in the VS Code API Designer, Spectral rulesets, and AI compliance checks against plain-language rules. | Insomnia lints specs. No AI readiness scoring and no design-time AI governance. |
| MCP & A2A control | Secure, rate-limit, and govern MCP servers and agent-to-agent traffic | MCP proxy with authentication, tool-level authorization, rate limits, and rewrite policies. A2A is on the AI Gateway roadmap for Q3 2026. | MCP plugins shipped in Gateway 3.12+, all Enterprise tier (MCP OAuth2 plugin still tech preview). Agent Gateway (A2A) went GA in April 2026 with AI Gateway 3.14, Enterprise tier. |
| Universal governance | |||
| Unified API + AI + MCP governance | One place to govern APIs, LLMs, and MCP traffic | One control plane across API, AI, and MCP traffic, including the gateways WSO2 federates (WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, Envoy). | Unified, but for Kong gateways only. Konnect Catalog auto-discovers AWS API Gateway, but deep policy enforcement stays Kong-centric. |
| AI guardrails depth | Protect data and prove compliance | 40+ policies in Policy Hub: semantic prompt guard, PII masking, NeMo Guard, Granite Guardian, Bedrock, and Azure Content Safety, plus the ability to write custom guardrails in Go. Included with AI Gateway. | Good native and third-party coverage (sanitizer, prompt guards, Bedrock, Azure, Model Armor, Lakera), but nearly all of it needs the separate Kong AI License. |
| Identity and MCP access control | Enforce who can call which tools, with agent and user identity from the same vendor | WSO2 Identity Server natively secures human APIs and AI traffic (OIDC, SAML, CIBA, SCIM, CIAM). mcp-authz is GA for tool-level authorization, rewrite, and per-tool rate limits. | No identity product. Authentication is delegated to Okta, Auth0, or Keycloak through plugins, and the OIDC plugin needs Enterprise. MCP Tool ACLs and scope filtering shipped in 3.13/3.14; the MCP OAuth2 plugin remains tech preview. |
| Event-native governance | Govern Kafka and event-stream traffic alongside APIs and AI | Roadmap: Event Gateway GA targeted for Q4 2026. | Kong Event Gateway shipped (1.1, March 2026); control plane is Konnect cloud only. |
| Freedom and flexibility | |||
| Modular, unbundled architecture | Accelerate time to value and reduce TCO by deploying only what you need | Gateway, AI Workspace, API control plane, MCP Hub, and monetization can be purchased and deployed independently, then layered in later. | AI Gateway is a plugin set on top of Kong Gateway; the value concentrates in the Konnect bundle. |
| Deployment flexibility | Run wherever the regulator requires, including air-gapped environments | Self-hosted, hybrid, and SaaS deployment models, including air-gapped, from a single Apache 2.0 codebase. | The Enterprise gateway runs on-prem, but MCP Registry, AI Manager, Metering & Billing, Event Gateway, and the new Dev Portal run only in Konnect cloud, none of them available in air-gapped estates. |
| 100% open source foundation | Meets open-source procurement and sovereignty mandates | Apache 2.0 across the platform with full function, no open core. Monetization is the one SaaS-only exception. | Open-core: RBAC, Kong Manager, the dev portal, OIDC, audit logging, and every advanced AI plugin require a commercial license. |
| Provider and routing choice | Route to any model, on any infrastructure, in the language your team already uses | Native routing (Round Robin, Weighted, Failover, Intelligent, Semantic) across all major LLM providers and any custom provider you add. Envoy data plane with policies in Go or Python. | Advanced routing, semantic caching, and token limits require the paid AI license. Built on NGINX with Lua-based plugins; Go, Python, and JavaScript plugins add overhead. |
| Monetization | |||
| Business-level AI analytics | See which customers adopt, which stick, and which will pay more | Moesif-powered adoption funnels, retention, behavioral cohorts, AI Explain, and automated customer guidance. | Metering and ops telemetry only, no product analytics. |
| AI FinOps and chargeback | Understand and chargeback AI cost automatically | Token and USD budgets per user, team, and app; cost dashboards with fully automated chargeback and export to external systems. | Basic AI rate limits; no automated chargeback workflows or per-user cost views. |
| Enterprise-grade AI monetization | Turn AI APIs into revenue centers | Battle-tested with Siemens, You.com, and Oxford University Press. Stripe, Zuora, Chargebee, and AWS Marketplace connectors; prepaid credits and business-level quotas. | Konnect Metering & Billing, built on OpenMeter (acquired September 2025). Stripe shipped, other billing systems are contact-sales; Konnect cloud only, with limited enterprise proof so far. |
| Cross-gateway monetization | Monetize the estate you already run, not just one vendor's gateway | Moesif gateway plugins meter Kong and AWS traffic today, billed from one control plane. | Meters Kong gateways plus custom sources through a collector; no integrations for other vendors' gateways. |
Why teams choose WSO2 AI Gateway
over Kong
Deployment options
Resources
WSO2 AI Gateway
Govern LLM, MCP, and agentic traffic from one unified component.
API Portal & MCP Hub
Productized MCP Hub for AI-agent tool discovery and consumption.
Frequently asked questions
No. WSO2 delivers AI Gateway, MCP Hub, and AI Workspace as one unified component governed from a single policy framework. Kong's AI capabilities are 14+ independently configured plugins per route.
No. Kong's MCP stack is composable plugins (AI MCP Proxy, AI MCP OAuth2) configured per route, with its MCP Registry still in tech preview as of February 2026. WSO2 ships a productized MCP Hub with a searchable catalog, subscription flows, credential issuance, and an MCP Playground.
No. WSO2 Identity Server is the same platform securing both human APIs and AI traffic, with OIDC, SAML, CIBA, SCIM, and CIAM included natively. Kong relies on its Enterprise OIDC plugin plus a Konnect Config Store for upstream credentials and ships no CIAM of its own.
No. Most, including AI Proxy Advanced, Rate Limiting Advanced, Semantic Cache, RAG Injector, and MCP plugins, require the Kong AI License. WSO2 API Platform's core AI Gateway runtime is fully Apache 2.0.
Only partially. Kong's Konnect Catalog auto-discovers AWS API Gateway and Azure API Management, but deep policy enforcement stays focused on Kong runtimes. WSO2 governs APIs running on WSO2, AWS, Azure, Kong, and Envoy gateways from a single control plane.
Yes, but only recently: Kong added native monetization via its OpenMeter acquisition in September 2025. WSO2 has offered native Moesif-powered analytics with Stripe integration and subscription tiers since acquiring Moesif in May 2025, making it more mature and platform-native.
Kong® is a registered trademark of Kong, Inc. Insomnia® and Konnect® are trademarks of Kong, Inc. All product, company names, and marks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification purposes only. Last updated August 2026. * Monetization is the one SaaS-only exception to WSO2's Apache 2.0 licensing; every other core component ships fully open source.