Bifrost vs Kong Gateway
Bifrost
getmaxim.ai
Kong Gateway
konghq.comSide by side
| Figure | Bifrost | Kong Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 7 |
| Spec score · LLM gateways | 9.0 (#4) | 8.2 (#13) |
| Deployment | Bifrost can run as a self-hosted binary or through npx, Docker and Kubernetes, including private-cloud and disconnected environments. | Kong says the gateway can run on premises, in cloud, Kubernetes, or serverless environments, with or without a database and in hybrid or cloud-hosted modes. |
| Support | OSS includes documentation, community, and self-management support, while Enterprise offers SLA-backed support and direct access to engineers. | Konnect Plus includes email support with a two-business-day SLA; Enterprise lists dedicated customer success and technical account managers and higher SLAs. |
Plans
Kong Gateway
- Free trialFree
- PlusPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Kong Gateway Open SourceFree
- Konnect Free trialFree
- Konnect EnterprisePriced on request
- Konnect PlusPrice not published
In their own words
Bifrost
Bifrost is an AI gateway and control plane for directing, governing, and securing traffic involving model calls, MCP tools, and agents. It connects to more than 20 AI providers through one OpenAI-compatible API. Routing tools include weighted load balancing, retries, automatic provider failover, and semantic caching. Virtual keys let teams apply permissions, budgets, rate limits, and routing rules by consumer. Bifrost can connect with external MCP servers and present their tools to clients such as Claude Desktop. Its documented SDK integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Google GenAI, LiteLLM, and LangChain. Request monitoring, Prometheus metrics, and OpenTelemetry tracing integrations provide observability. The free OSS edition is for developers, small teams, and self-managed deployments; it can run via NPX, Docker, Kubernetes, or Go binary. Enterprise adds SSO, role-based access, audit logs, guardrails, vault integrations, and private VPC deployments. Enterprise pricing is custom, with a 14-day trial on an enterprise license.
Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.