agentgateway vs Kusk Gateway
agentgateway
agentgateway.devKusk Gateway
kusk.ioSide by side
| Figure | agentgateway | Kusk Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Ingress Controllers | 9.1 (#1) | 8.5 (#5) |
| Authentication | Documented authentication methods include JWT, API keys, basic authentication and MCP authentication specifications. | Documented authentication modes include JWT, OAuth2/OIDC, custom authorization and Cloudentity. |
| Deployment | The project provides standalone binary, Docker and Kubernetes deployment paths. | Kusk says APIs can be published by adding an annotation to a service deployment, without additional configuration or DevOps support. |
| Intended users | The site invites tool-builders, platform engineers, and AI enthusiasts to join the community and describes the controls as suited to platform teams. | The maker presents Kusk for teams building modern REST APIs on Kubernetes and following an OpenAPI-first APIOps workflow. |
| Licence | The open-source project is licensed under Apache-2.0. | Kusk is presented as 100% open source under the MIT License. |
| Self-hosting | Agentgateway is designed to run on bare metal, virtual machines, containers or Kubernetes. | The product must run inside a Kubernetes cluster and can be installed locally or on a remote cluster. |
| What it does | Agentgateway is a Rust data plane that connects, secures, routes and observes LLM, MCP, A2A and ordinary service traffic. | Kusk is a Kubernetes API gateway powered by Envoy with native OpenAPI support for configuring cluster ingress. |
Plans
In their own words
agentgateway
Agentgateway is a free, open-source HTTP and gRPC gateway for routing, securing, observing, and governing service, LLM, MCP, and agent-to-agent traffic. Its LLM gateway offers an OpenAI-compatible API for providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, Vertex, and OSS Llama runs. Self-hosted inference routing supports vLLM, TGI, and Triton, with choices guided by latency, cost, and model. For MCP it supports server discovery, scoped tool calls, and audit trails; A2A routing connects runtimes such as LangChain, CrewAI, and ADK. Security features include JWT and OIDC, API keys, authorization policies, TLS and mTLS with certificate rotation, and rate limiting. Guardrails inspect MCP calls and responses for prompt injection and unsafe payloads, while prompt guards support checks and redaction. Observability includes OpenTelemetry, Prometheus token-usage histograms, Jaeger traces, and request logs with latency, token counts, and realized USD cost. It can run as a standalone binary, in Docker, or on Kubernetes. Commercial support is listed through a partner.
Kusk Gateway
Kusk Gateway is a Kubernetes API gateway powered by Envoy, with native OpenAPI support. It uses OpenAPI definitions to configure a cluster's Ingress Controller, making it relevant to teams following an OpenAPI-first workflow for REST APIs. It can mock API responses for prototyping and automatically validate requests and responses. Teams can set request timeouts and CORS without coding, and adjust headers, CORS, limits, and quality of service globally or for individual paths.
An open-source dashboard supports API deployment and management, specification editing and validation, and API testing. The maker says an API can be published by adding an annotation to a service deployment, without additional configuration or DevOps support. Kusk can be installed on Mac, Linux, or Windows and is self-hosted. The project is 100% open source under the MIT License, with rate limiting and authentication policies listed. The maker presents it for teams building modern REST APIs on Kubernetes.