API gateway heritage vs AI-native governance.
Kong is a mature API gateway with AI plugins added on top. DVARA is purpose-built for AI traffic patterns — tokens, models, streaming, MCP tool calls, agent loops, and context windows. The difference is architectural, not incremental.
Read from Kong AI's own documentation on 28 August 2026. A comparison in which we win everything is a marketing asset, not a comparison — so this is the part we would rather you knew before choosing.
Source: developer.konghq.com
DVARA leads or ties every row in this table — Kong AI does not come out ahead on any of them. That is unusual enough that you should check it rather than take it on trust: these rows are the capabilities we built the product around, so they are the ones we chose to compare, and a table chosen by us is not a neutral survey. Kong AI is likely to be the better tool where its own strengths lie — read its documentation alongside this.
Kong treats AI as another API. DVARA understands AI traffic natively.
| Feature | DVARA | Kong AI |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI-compatible unified API | ✓ | ∼ |
| Structured outputs across providers | ✓ | — |
| Per-model capability flags on /v1/models | ✓ | — |
| Capability-aware route filtering | ✓ | — |
| Context window governance + pruning | ✓ | — |
| Semantic cache (similarity serving opt-in) | ✓ | ∼ |
| Feature | DVARA | Kong AI |
|---|---|---|
| Policy-as-Code engine (YAML DSL) | ✓ | — |
| Policy dry-run before activation | ✓ | — |
| Tamper-evident HMAC-signed audit trail | ✓ | — |
| PII detection and redaction | ✓ | ∼ |
| Prompt firewall + jailbreak detection | ✓ | ∼ |
| Budget caps with model downgrade | ✓ | — |
| RBAC access control | ✓ | ✓ |
Kong offers basic MCP server generation and governance via its AI Gateway add-ons. DVARA ships per-tool policy, approval gates, agent loop detection, and per-tool cost attribution as first-class platform features.
| Feature | DVARA | Kong AI |
|---|---|---|
| MCP tool calls proxied and governed | ✓ | ✓ |
| MCP PII scan on arguments + responses | ✓ | ∼ |
| MCP server registry + credential store | ✓ | ✓ |
| Human approval gate | ✓ | ∼ |
| Agent loop detection + kill switch | ✓ | — |
| Agent-to-agent (A2A) hop governance | ✓ | — |
| Unified LLM + MCP trace | ✓ | ∼ |
| Feature | DVARA | Kong AI |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose-built for AI traffic | ✓ | — |
| First request in under 2 minutes | ✓ | — |
| Air-gapped deployment | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-region active-active | ✓ | ✓ |
| SOC2 / HIPAA / GDPR compliance reports | ✓ | — |
Kong is a mature API gateway that has added AI-native plugins — semantic caching, PII sanitization, prompt guards, and basic MCP server tooling. DVARA goes deeper in every one of those areas — Policy-as-Code with dry-run, tamper-evident HMAC-signed audit, per-tool MCP policy with approval gates and loop detection, budget caps with model downgrade, and SOC2 / HIPAA / GDPR evidence packages. If your AI traffic needs governance, compliance, or agentic depth on top of routing, DVARA is the platform built for it.
Run the LLM Gateway free in your own infrastructure, production included — a licence when you need the MCP and A2A planes with support.
The Kong AI column describes what Kong AI's public documentation said when we read it in June 2026 — a dash means we did not find the capability documented, not that the product cannot do it. Vendors ship continuously; check their docs before deciding. The DVARA column is a claim about our own code and is verified against the released tag.