# Kong Gateway

🦍 The API and AI Gateway

Repository: https://github.com/Kong/kong
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/kong-gateway
Homepage: https://konghq.com/install/
Language: Lua
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: api-gateway, microservices, api-management, serverless, apis, reverse-proxy, cloud-native, microservice, devops, kubernetes, kubernetes-ingress-controller, kubernetes-ingress, ai, artificial-intelligence, ai-gateway, llm-gateway, openai-proxy, llm-ops, mcp, mcp-gateway
Last push: 2026-08-16T14:44:43+00:00
Link (homepage): https://konghq.com/install/
Link (site_page): https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker
Link (site_page): https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker-read-only
Link (site_page): https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker-distroless
Link (site_page): https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/kubernetes/konnect

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 91/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 77, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4307, "days_push": 17, "days_rel": 77, "gap_med": 68, "n_releases_24m": 6}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 44045, forks 5205 (observed 2026-08-28T04:12:09.243812+00:00)

## What it is
Kong Gateway is a cloud-native, high-performance API gateway that proxies, routes, load-balances, and secures API, LLM, and MCP traffic, extensible via a large plugin ecosystem. It runs on Kubernetes via its official Ingress Controller and supports DB-less, Docker, and hybrid deployments.

## Use cases
- manage and secure microservices API traffic
- add authentication and rate limiting to APIs
- proxy and route requests to multiple LLM providers
- secure and observe MCP (Model Context Protocol) traffic
- run an API gateway on Kubernetes with an ingress controller
- load balance and health check upstream services
- self-host an OpenAI-compatible AI gateway

## When to choose
- you need a battle-tested, plugin-extensible gateway for API, LLM, or MCP traffic
- you run microservices on Kubernetes and need ingress plus API management
- you want multi-LLM routing, semantic security, and AI traffic analytics in one layer
- you need cloud-native deployments (Docker, Helm, DB-less, hybrid) with strong observability

## When to avoid
- you need only a simple lightweight reverse proxy without API management features
- your stack is not cloud/container-oriented and you want a minimal footprint
- you require a fully managed SaaS gateway and prefer not to operate infrastructure (consider Kong Konnect instead)
- you need a gateway in a language other than Lua/OpenResty or want deep customization outside its plugin model

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: api-gateway, proxy, routing, auth, rate-limiting, middleware, load-testing, mcp, llm-inference, monitoring, security
- domain: apis, microservices, large-language-models, cloud-computing, self-hosted, security, networking
- platform: self-hosted, cloud
- tags: api-management, reverse-proxy, ai-gateway, llm-gateway, mcp-gateway, kubernetes-ingress, plugin-system, openai-proxy, cloud-native, lua, ai-agents, devops, containers, kubernetes, docker, linux, web-server

## Member repositories
- Kong/kong (main) score 91
- Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller (plugin) score 98
- Kong/docker-kong (infra) score 82

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:09.243812+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:22:15.681869+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Kong/kong (fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:09.243812+00:00, sha 1ff24b1c93f2)
  - homepage: https://konghq.com/install/ (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.414062+00:00, sha 447f981b5e5e)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.426086+00:00, sha c80081e43edc)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker-read-only (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.428407+00:00, sha 43cbf3932c25)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/docker-distroless (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.430379+00:00, sha d74414988ab7)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/gateway/install/kubernetes/konnect (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.432240+00:00, sha 2f80ce3afb31)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/operator/get-started/gateway-api/install (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.435733+00:00, sha 69c84b01748b)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/kubernetes-ingress-controller/install (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.438098+00:00, sha 277f15920482)
  - site_page: https://konghq.com/pricing (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.423652+00:00, sha 2eb8a3715313)
  - site_page: https://developer.konghq.com/sitemap (fetched 2026-08-29T07:46:21.440167+00:00, sha 025372822e1b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.