A Sovereign Kong AI Gateway Alternative
Kong brought AI traffic under the API gateway you already run. The Scrydon AI Gateway brings it under the identity you already run — every call as a person, inside your perimeter, under one policy that also governs tools and egress.
Kong AI Gateway is a set of plugins on the Kong API gateway: proxy any model behind one route, cap tokens, guard prompts, cache semantically, and treat AI like every other API your platform team already governs. That is its strength — and its limit: a call is an API consumer, and the governance is an API gateway's. The Scrydon AI Gateway makes the call a person and follows that person past the model call. It stands alone and can be deployed on its own.
Read this if you're a platform team that runs Kong today and is deciding whether AI traffic is just another API, or the one that needs a control point of its own.
Deploy the AI Gateway Starts at €500 / month on a yearly commitment, deployed on its own in a day.
The Scrydon AI Gateway is a sovereign alternative to Kong AI Gateway: a single governed endpoint that speaks the standard model APIs so existing tools reach any model unchanged, where every call runs under the caller's own federated identity rather than an API consumer credential, against a clearance-gated model allowlist, with data loss prevention, a spend cap and an immutable audit trail. It shares one policy and one audit chain with governed tool calls and sandbox egress, and runs air-gapped, on-premises or on a European sovereign cloud.
Kong AI Gateway is a sensible extension of a widely deployed API gateway: AI proxy plugins that put many providers behind one route, token-based rate limiting, prompt guards and templates, semantic caching and, more recently, support for fronting MCP servers — all governed with the consumers, keys and OpenID Connect plugins a Kong estate already uses, and deployable wherever Kong runs, including on-premises. For a platform team that treats AI as one more API, it is a fair answer. The limits are the limits of treating it that way. A consumer is an application or a team, so attribution stops there; an API gateway governs requests that pass through it, while the agent's tool calls and the sandbox it runs in do not; and model policy expressed as API policy has no notion of a person's clearance. The Scrydon AI Gateway keeps the developer experience — the standard APIs, any model, unchanged tools — and changes the subject of the policy: a gateway key minted against a named person in your identity provider, the allowlist following that person's clearance, and the same identity governing the tools the agent calls over MCP and the network its sandbox may reach.
Runs as a Person, Not a Consumer
Every call resolves through your identity provider to the human who made it, with their delegated grants — the basis for per-developer cost, clearance-gated models and revocation on the next turn.
Governance Past the API Gateway
One policy and one audit chain across the model call, the tools the agent calls over MCP, and the egress of the sandbox those tools run in.
Sovereign by Deployment
Air-gapped, on-premises or a European sovereign cloud, with open-weight models on your own hardware behind the same endpoint.
Kong AI Gateway Alternative in the Scrydon platform
One integrated, sovereign architecture. Here is where Kong AI Gateway Alternative sits — highlighted against the full stack it works with.
The AI OS for Humans & AI Agents
Ontology & Semantic Layer, one connected model for your data, knowledge & processes
Combining the best of data lakes, data warehouses and search
Governed access to every model, and the agents & workflows that execute across your systems
Integrate across A2A, MCP, legacy systems and data sources
Secure domain federation, trusted data sharing, and cross-boundary intelligence
Sovereign Foundations
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What Kong AI Gateway governs, and what the AI Gateway governs with the same request
Kong AI Gateway's strength is that it lives where your APIs already live: proxy plugins that put many providers behind one route, token-based rate limits, prompt guards, semantic caching and MCP fronting, governed with the consumers, keys and OpenID Connect plugins a Kong estate already uses. The Scrydon AI Gateway takes the same governed-route idea and changes the subject of the policy: the call runs as a named person from your identity provider rather than as a consumer, the model allowlist follows that person's clearance, data loss prevention screens what leaves, and the audit record settles before the stream finishes. The vendor key is never issued to anyone, and the AI Gateway can sit behind Kong where that is your standard.
The standard APIs, unchanged tools — Both put a governed route in front of your models. The AI Gateway speaks the Anthropic, OpenAI and Gemini dialects natively, so coding agents and applications run through it without modification.
A person, not a consumer — Kong attributes traffic to a consumer and its credential. The AI Gateway mints keys against a named person in your identity provider and uses that person's delegated grants when the agent goes on to call a tool.
Model policy that knows about clearance — A clearance-gated allowlist decides which models this person may reach; data loss prevention and moderation run inline; the turn is metered against the organisation's cap before the answer lands.
The same chain for tools and egress — When the agent calls a system over MCP or runs code in a sandbox, the same credential model, policy snapshot and audit trail apply — an API gateway sees the requests that pass through it and nothing else.
When AI traffic turns out not to be just another API
Kong AI Gateway is a fair choice when AI traffic is one more API on an estate that already runs Kong and the questions are an API team's: rate, cost, caching, a guard on the prompt. The gap opens when the questions become a security team's. An API consumer is an application or a team, so nobody can say which person made a call; an API gateway governs the requests that pass through it, so the agent's afternoon — spent calling your mail, your tickets and your CRM from a sandbox — passes unseen; and route-level policy has no notion of a person's clearance. The Scrydon AI Gateway is built for those questions: every call attributable to a person, one policy and one audit chain across the model call, the tools the agent calls and the sandbox it runs in, deployed where your production runs — behind Kong if you like — and deployable on its own before anything else is.
Scrydon AI Gateway vs Kong AI Gateway
Both put model traffic behind a governed route and both meter tokens. The difference is who the call runs as, and whether governance stops at the API gateway.
| Capability | Scrydon | Kong AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Who the call runs as | The person, resolved through your identity provider, with their own delegated grants | An API consumer with a key or a validated token; attribution per consumer |
| Model calls governed | Clearance-gated allowlist, DLP, moderation, cap and immutable audit on every call | Token-based rate limits, prompt guards and templates, semantic caching, logging |
| Tool calls governed | Same identity, policy and audit chain as the model call | MCP servers can be fronted like any API; not the caller's delegated grants in a sandbox |
| Network egress from the sandbox | Enforced outside the workload, which cannot reconfigure it | Out of scope |
| Where the vendor key lives | On the platform; never issued to a developer | In the gateway's configuration or vault |
| Cost attribution | Per person, per team or unit, and per turn, by model, capability and workflow, with an on-pace projection and a cap | Token metrics per consumer and route, into your observability stack |
| Deployment | Sovereign — air-gapped, on-premises or European cloud | Wherever Kong runs — self-managed, on-premises or the vendor's cloud control plane |
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly fee for the cluster that carries your people, excluding hosting | Open-source gateway; AI plugins largely in the enterprise edition, by agreement |
A category comparison, written to orient: Kong is a mature gateway and we would not pretend otherwise. Kong is a trademark of Kong Inc.; capabilities evolve — verify current details with the vendor.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Kong AI Gateway for a regulated organisation?+
How is the Scrydon AI Gateway different from Kong AI Gateway?+
We already run Kong. Do we have to replace it?+
Can the AI Gateway front MCP servers like Kong can?+
Can we start with just the AI Gateway?+
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