Kong

Kong: API and AI Connectivity

Kong is a connectivity platform for APIs and, increasingly, AI traffic. Its gateway secures, manages, and monetizes the requests flowing between services, models, and clouds, and a dedicated AI Gateway adds controls for LLM traffic — managing token budgets, semantic caching, and governance for the agents and applications calling models. Alongside the widely used open-source Kong Gateway, the platform covers API lifecycle management, event streaming, and a developer portal.

It is built for platform and API teams that need to govern and observe both traditional API traffic and the new wave of AI and agent traffic.

Key Features

• AI Gateway for LLM traffic, token budgets, and semantic caching
• API gateway and lifecycle management
• Event gateway for real-time streaming
• Usage-based metering and billing
• Developer portal for API and MCP discovery
• Observability and cost control

Ideal Use Case

Kong fits platform, API, and infrastructure teams that need to secure, manage, and monetize both API and AI/LLM traffic across services and clouds. It suits organizations adding AI and agents that want central governance over model calls.

How Kong differentiates

Kong extends a widely adopted API gateway into an AI Gateway, governing model and agent traffic with the same platform that handles APIs. It lists customers including United Airlines, HSBC, and BMW, and reports more than a trillion requests per day across its user base.

FAQ

What is Kong? An AI connectivity platform that secures, manages, and monetizes API and AI token traffic.

What is the AI Gateway? Kong's gateway for LLM traffic — token budgets, semantic caching, and governance.

Is there a free version? Yes — the open-source Kong Gateway plus paid enterprise plans.

Who uses Kong? Customers including United Airlines, HSBC, and BMW.

tl;dr

Kong is an AI connectivity platform that secures, manages, and monetizes API and AI token traffic, with an AI Gateway for LLM and agent traffic, used by United Airlines, HSBC, and BMW.