Kong Konnect
Kong's unified platform for managing and governing API, AI, MCP and event traffic through gateways.
Kong Konnect is the management platform from Kong Inc. for API, AI and event connectivity. Kong Konnect is used by platform teams to run gateways that secure, route, observe and meter traffic to APIs, large language models, MCP servers and event streams, and to publish those services through a catalog and developer portal. A 30-day free trial is available.
Best for Platform and API teams that need one control point for API traffic and for governing LLM, MCP and agent traffic, including cost control and monetization.
- Platforms
- Web, API, MCP
- Pricing model
- Subscription
- Starting price
- $25 per month Plus plan starting price; usage is charged on top
- Free plan
- No
- Free trial
- Yes
- API
- Yes
- Made by
- Kong Inc.
- Added
Last verified: . Information taken from konghq.com.
What is Kong Konnect?
Kong Konnect is a unified API, AI and event management platform offered by Kong Inc. It brings several runtimes under one control plane: an API gateway, an AI gateway for LLM, MCP and agent-to-agent traffic, an event gateway for streams such as Kafka, and a service mesh. Around these sit shared services, including a service catalog, an AI registry, observability for requests and token consumption, identity and access controls, usage metering and billing, and a developer portal where API and AI products can be published and monetized. Gateways can run as dedicated cloud instances in AWS, GCP or Azure, as serverless gateways, or in hybrid and self-managed setups. An assistant called KAi and an MCP server for Konnect are also listed. Pricing has a usage-based Plus plan and a custom Enterprise plan.
Key Features
AI Gateway
Routes and governs calls to LLMs, MCP servers and agents with plugins for rate limiting, semantic caching, prompt guarding and sanitising.
API Gateway and Lifecycle
Covers API design, testing, publishing, access control and threat protection from a single platform.
Event Gateway
Standardises access to real-time data streams and moves authentication, encryption and failover to the gateway layer.
Observability
Reports request analytics along with model, token, MCP and agent consumption.
Developer Portal and Monetization
Publishes API and AI products for self-service discovery and applies entitlements, metering and billing.
Flexible Deployment
Runs gateways as dedicated cloud, serverless, hybrid or self-managed data planes under one control plane.
Screenshots
Use Cases
- Central LLM Access
- Put every team's model calls behind one gateway to apply the same security and spending limits.
- Internal Developer Platform
- Give developers a catalog and portal to find and reuse existing APIs.
- MCP Governance
- Control which agents can reach which MCP servers and observe that traffic.
- API Monetization
- Charge for API or AI product usage with metering tied to invoices.
- Kafka Access for Applications
- Expose event streams to applications and agents through a managed gateway.
Pricing
Plus
$25
per month, plus usage, billed monthly
- Unified AI Gateway for LLM, MCP and A2A traffic
- Developer Portal and monetization
- 30-day free trial without a credit card
Enterprise
Custom
contact sales, billed annually
- AI cost management and monetization
- Agent identity and access control
- No region limitations
As listed in the text of the official pricing page under AI Management. Plus is a starting price with usage charged on top; gateway control planes, extra requests and other items are billed separately. Checked 9 Oct 2026 at konghq.com.
Things to know
- Plus has volume ceilings
- On Plus, AI gateway traffic includes one million requests a month and is capped at ten million, with additional millions charged separately.
- Gateway types are priced individually
- Dedicated cloud, serverless and hybrid gateway control planes each carry their own monthly charge on Plus.
- Record covers Konnect, not all Kong products
- Kong also sells Insomnia, Kong Mesh and self-hosted Gateway Enterprise, which have their own terms.
FAQs
What is Kong Konnect?
Kong Konnect is Kong's platform for managing API, AI and event traffic through gateways, with shared services for observability, access control, cataloguing and monetization.
What is Kong Konnect used for?
Kong Konnect is used to secure and govern API calls, LLM and MCP requests and event streams, and to publish APIs and AI products to developers.
Is Kong Konnect free?
Kong Konnect offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial, the Plus plan is usage based and Enterprise is custom.
How much does Kong Konnect cost?
Kong Konnect's Plus plan is listed from $25 per month plus usage, billed monthly, and Enterprise pricing is custom and billed annually. Individual gateway types and request volumes carry their own charges.
Does Kong Konnect support MCP?
Yes. Kong Konnect's AI gateway handles MCP traffic, and Kong also lists an MCP server for Konnect and an AI registry.
Can Kong Konnect be self-hosted?
Kong Konnect supports hybrid and self-managed gateways. Fully self-hosted AI gateways, with both control plane and data plane run locally, fall under the separate Gateway Enterprise offering.
Who makes Kong Konnect?
Kong Konnect is made by Kong Inc.
Who it's for
- Platform engineers
- API teams
- AI teams
- Developers
- Enterprises
Comments
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Alternatives to Kong Konnect
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|---|---|---|---|
 VercelCloud platform for deploying web apps and AI agents, with an AI gateway, sandboxes, workflows and a global CDN. |
Yes | $20/mo | Yes |
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 APIParkUnified gateway for calling, authenticating, billing and monitoring AI models, APIs and MCP services. |
— | — | Yes |
 FirecrawlWeb data API that searches, scrapes, crawls and interacts with websites and returns clean output for AI applications. |
Yes | $16/mo | Yes |
 GreptileAI code review agent that indexes a repository and comments on pull requests with whole-codebase context. |
Yes | — | — |
Listed in the same categories as Kong Konnect. A starting price appears only where we checked it on the maker’s pricing page; a dash means not checked or not published. All Developer API tools