Higress vs Kong Gateway
Higress
higress.io
Kong Gateway
konghq.comSide by side
| Figure | Higress | Kong Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 7 |
| Spec score · API Gateway Software | 8.7 (#2) | 7.8 (#12) |
| Deployment | A Docker all-in-one deployment exposes the console on port 8001, HTTP gateway on 8080 and HTTPS gateway on 8443. | 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. |
| Security controls | Official capabilities include WAF protection and key, HMAC, JWT, Basic and OIDC authentication or authorization strategies. | Kong's product page lists security and authentication plugins, while its pricing page lists RBAC and identifies SSO and audit logs as Enterprise features. |
| Support | The community edition includes community support and documentation; the dedicated commercial edition lists ticket, DingTalk group, and offline support. | Konnect Plus includes email support with a two-business-day SLA; Enterprise lists dedicated customer success and technical account managers and higher SLAs. |
Plans
Higress
- Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway Serverless StandardPriced on request
- Higress CommunityFree
- Higress Community EditionFree
- Alibaba Cloud AI Gateway Serverless EnterprisePriced on request
- Feitian Exclusive EditionPriced on request
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
Higress
Higress is an open-source API gateway for governing AI services and cloud-native traffic, built on Istio and Envoy. Its AI Gateway provides centralized access to model APIs and MCP servers, with unified routing, protocol conversion, load balancing, and fallback. Higress says it supports more than 100 mainstream large language models. It can convert HTTP to MCP and proxy native MCP services. Traffic controls include token-based quotas and rate limits, API key pool rotation, and consumer authentication. Caching can reuse inference results precisely or semantically to reduce token use and latency for similar or repeated questions. Listed security measures cover prompt attacks, sensitive content, data privacy, and output filtering. The wider API gateway combines traffic, microservice, and security gateway functions with service exposure and API lifecycle management. It supports HTTP, HTTP2, HTTPS, GRPC, GRPCS, TCP, and Dubbo, along with Kubernetes Ingress and Gateway API. Custom Wasm plugins can be written in Go, Rust, or JavaScript, with sandbox isolation and hot updates. The self-hosted Community Edition is free; the site also lists a managed Alibaba Cloud plan billed by actual usage, starting at ¥0.
Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.