[opensourcedex]

kong is a free, open source cloud infrastructure management project written in Lua and released under Apache-2.0. It has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks and 200 open issues, and was last pushed 11 days ago. On this registry it ranks #1 of 43 tracked projects in Cloud Infrastructure Management, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 7 stars over the last 3 tracked days.

What is kong?

Kong (also known as Kong Gateway) is an open-source, cloud-native, platform-agnostic API, LLM, and MCP gateway, licensed under Apache-2.0, built for platform, DevOps, and AI engineering teams that need a single high-performance layer to route, secure, and observe both conventional API traffic and agentic LLM traffic.

What it is

Kong Gateway is a scalable gateway written in Lua that proxies, routes, load balances, health checks, and authenticates traffic. It is distinguished by high performance and extensibility through plugins, and it runs natively on Kubernetes through its official Kubernetes Ingress Controller. It is equally at home on bare metal, in containers, and in the cloud, and it is listed under the api-gateway, ai-gateway, llm-gateway, api-management, cloud-native, devops, and kubernetes topics. Beyond classic API handling, it adds AI traffic capabilities including multi-LLM support, semantic security, and MCP traffic security and analytics, positioning it as a gateway for API, LLM, and MCP traffic together.

The concrete problem it solves is duplication and fragmentation. By centralizing common API, AI, and MCP functionality across every service in an organization, Kong Gateway frees individual engineering teams from reimplementing proxying, routing, load balancing, health checking, and authentication in each service. It acts as the central layer for orchestrating microservices or conventional API traffic, and for agentic LLM and MCP traffic as well. Instead of each team owning its own edge logic, one gateway enforces authentication, routing, and traffic policy consistently, and the same gateway becomes the control point for model provider routing and MCP traffic governance.

Key capabilities

  • Proxying, routing, load balancing, and health checking, all configurable through a RESTful Admin API on port 8001 or through declarative configuration.
  • Authentication and authorization for APIs using methods such as JWT, basic auth, OAuth, and ACLs.
  • A universal LLM API that routes across multiple providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and GCP Gemini.
  • AI traffic capabilities covering multi-LLM support, semantic security, and MCP traffic security and analytics.
  • Plugin-based extensibility, which the project names as a defining trait alongside high performance.
  • Native Kubernetes operation through the official Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
  • A management web UI, Kong Manager, served on port 8002 for operators who prefer a graphical interface.

Who uses it and how

  • Platform and DevOps teams run it as the ingress and API layer for Kubernetes clusters, deploying the official Kubernetes Ingress Controller so gateway configuration follows cluster resources.
  • Teams on containers, bare metal, or cloud start the full stack through the Docker Compose distribution with a Postgres database profile, then send service traffic through port 8000.
  • AI and platform engineers route model traffic through the universal LLM API, using one gateway to reach OpenAI, Anthropic, and GCP Gemini rather than integrating each provider separately.
  • Operators who want declarative, version-controlled configuration use decK against the Admin API on port 8001, while others use Kong Manager on port 8002 for day-to-day inspection.
  • Organizations that would rather not run the gateway themselves can move to the cloud-hosted Kong Konnect instead of self-hosting.

Getting started

The suggested path is the Docker Compose distribution: clone https://github.com/Kong/docker-kong, enter the compose folder, and run KONG_DATABASE=postgres docker-compose --profile database up. A DB-less Docker installation procedure is also documented, and a free trial of the cloud-hosted Kong Konnect is available for those who prefer a managed start.

How it compares

No list of paid products that this project replaces is provided in the facts, and no peer gateway tools are named either. On the available evidence it stands alone in this registry.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the gateway itself and, in the standard Docker Compose path, a Postgres database, along with the Admin API or decK configuration workflow and the Kong Manager interface if it is wanted; DB-less mode removes the database requirement but not the gateway operations. Teams that do not want to run gateway infrastructure, or that want a managed control plane from the outset, should start with the hosted Kong Konnect rather than the self-hosted distribution. One honest weakness: the repository README is largely a pointer outward, with the installation matrix and most feature detail living on konghq.com and docs.konghq.com, and the in-repo feature list included in these facts is truncated mid-entry, so the README alone is not sufficient documentation.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Stars GitHub commit activity [![Build Status][badge-action-image]][badge-action-url] Version License Twitter Follow

Kong or Kong Gateway is a cloud-native, platform-agnostic, scalable API 𖧹 LLM 𖧹 MCP Gateway distinguished for its high performance and extensibility via plugins. It also provides advanced AI traffic capabilities with multi-LLM support, semantic security, MCP traffic security and analytics, and more.

By providing functionality for proxying, routing, load balancing, health checking, authentication (and more), Kong serves as the central layer for orchestrating microservices or conventional API traffic - and agentic LLM and MCP as well - with ease.

Kong runs natively on Kubernetes thanks to its official Kubernetes Ingress Controller.


Installation | Documentation | Discussions | Forum | Blog | Builds | AI Gateway | Cloud Hosted Kong

Getting Started

If you prefer to use a cloud-hosted Kong, you can sign up for a free trial of Kong Konnect and get started in minutes. If not, you can follow the instructions below to get started with Kong on your own infrastructure.

Let’s test drive Kong by adding authentication to an API in under 5 minutes.

We suggest using the docker-compose distribution via the instructions below, but there is also a docker installation procedure if you’d prefer to run the Kong Gateway in DB-less mode.

Whether you’re running in the cloud, on bare metal, or using containers, you can find every supported distribution on our official installation page.

  1. To start, clone the Docker repository and navigate to the compose folder.
  $ git clone https://github.com/Kong/docker-kong
  $ cd docker-kong/compose/
  1. Start the Gateway stack using:
  $ KONG_DATABASE=postgres docker-compose --profile database up

The Gateway is now available on the following ports on localhost:

  • :8000 - send traffic to your service via Kong
  • :8001 - configure Kong using Admin API or via decK
  • :8002 - access Kong's management Web UI (Kong Manager) on localhost:8002

Next, follow the quick start guide to tour the Gateway features.

Getting started with AI Gateway for LLM and MCP

If you would like to get started with Kong AI Gateway capabilities including LLM and MCP features, please refer to the official AI documentation.

Features

By centralizing common API, AI and MCP functionality across all your organization's services, Kong Gateway creates more freedom for engineering teams to focus on the challenges that matter most.

The top Kong features include:

  • Advanced routing, load balancing, health checking - all configurable via a RESTful admin API or declarative configuration.
  • Authentication and authorization for APIs using methods like JWT, basic auth, OAuth, ACLs and more.
  • Universal LLM API to route across multiple providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, GCP Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Azure AI, Databricks, Mistral, Huggingface and more.
  • MCP traffic governance, MCP security and MCP observability in addition to MCP autogeneration from any RESTful API.
  • 60+ AI features like AI observability, semantic security and caching, semantic routing and more.
  • Proxy, SSL/TLS termination, and connectivity support for L4 or L7 traffic.
  • Plugins for enforcing traffic controls, rate limiting, req/res transformations, logging, monitoring and including a plugin developer hub.
  • Sophisticated deployment models like Declarative Databaseless Deployment and Hybrid Deployment (control plane/data plane separation) without any vendor lock-in.
  • Native ingress controller support for serving Kubernetes.

Plugin Hub

Plugins provide advanced functionality that extends the use of the Gateway. Many of the Kong Inc. and community-developed plugins like AWS Lambda, Correlation ID, and Response Transformer are showcased at the Plugin Hub.

Contribute to the Plugin Hub and ensure your next innovative idea is published and available to the broader community!

Contributing

We ❤️ pull requests, and we’re continually working hard to make it as easy as possible for developers to contribute. Before beginning development with the Kong Gateway, please familiarize yourself with the following developer resources:

Use the Plugin Development Guide for building new and creative plugins, or browse the online version of Kong's source code documentation in the Plugin Development Kit (PDK) Reference. Developers can build plugins in Lua, Go or JavaScript.

Releases

Please see the Changelog for more details about a given release. The SemVer Specification is followed when versioning Gateway releases.

Join the Community

Konnect Cloud

Kong Inc. offers commercial subscriptions that enhance the Kong Gateway in a variety of ways. Customers of Kong's Konnect Cloud subscription take advantage of additional gateway functionality, commercial support, and access to Kong's managed (SaaS) control plane platform. The Konnect Cloud platform features include real-time analytics, a service catalog, developer portals, and so much more! Get started with Konnect Cloud.

License

Copyright 2016-2026 Kong Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is kong free to use?

kong is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does kong do?

🦍 The API and AI Gateway

What is kong written in?

kong is primarily written in Lua. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/Kong/kong, and it has 44,147 GitHub stars.