Kong Gateway vs TensorZero
Kong Gateway
konghq.com
TensorZero
tensorzero.comSide by side
| Figure | Kong Gateway | TensorZero |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 1 |
| Spec score · LLM gateways | 8.2 (#13) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Deployment | 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. | The gateway can be deployed with Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes using a reference Helm chart, or built from source with Cargo. |
| Support | Konnect Plus includes email support with a two-business-day SLA; Enterprise lists dedicated customer success and technical account managers and higher SLAs. | The project README directs users to Slack or Discord and offers work teams a Slack or Teams channel by email. |
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
Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
TensorZero
TensorZero is a free, open-source stack that brings together an LLM gateway, observability, optimization, evaluation, and experimentation. Its gateway provides a unified API for model providers and supports routing, retries, fallbacks, prompt templates, schemas, multi-step workflows, and traffic routing for A/B tests. Documented integrations include Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Azure, Google, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Together AI, vLLM, xAI, and OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Inference and feedback data go to the database you configure, where they can be queried with SQL; feedback can be tied to individual inferences or episodes. The gateway and UI can run through Docker, Docker Compose, Kubernetes and Helm, or a source build. API key authentication is available for gateway endpoints other than status and health checks. The project is available on GitHub, but is no longer maintained; its repository is archived and read-only. TensorZero is self-hosted and licensed under Apache 2.0. It collects pseudonymous aggregate usage analytics, excluding application data and inference inputs and outputs, with an option to disable collection.