Vercel AI Gateway vs Kong AI Gateway
Both are llm gateways tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
Vercel AI Gateway
No markup on tokens and $5 of free credits a month per team. The details worth knowing are that BYOK is paid-tier only, and zero data retention is a metered add-on at $0.10 per 1,000 requests.
Kong AI Gateway
AI routing built into Kong's established API gateway. The right answer if Kong already fronts your APIs and governance is the priority - an expensive one if you are adopting Kong just for this.
| Vercel AI Gateway | Kong AI Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Our rating | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| Starting price | $0 plus provider list price | Around $500/mo (Konnect) |
| Billing meter | No usage metering | No usage metering |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | No or paid tier only | Yes, free |
| Best for | Teams already deploying on Vercel who want provider-agnostic model access at list price with no markup, and who do not need governance features that carry a per-request charge. | Organisations already standardised on Kong for API management, where bringing LLM traffic under existing governance matters more than LLM-specific features. |
Our verdict on Vercel AI Gateway
Vercel AI Gateway takes no markup on tokens, which puts it in the right half of this category immediately. You pay provider list price from prepaid credits, every team gets $5 a month in credits that refresh every 30 days, and platform seats are free on Hobby - so a solo developer pays nothing for the gateway itself. Against OpenRouter's 5.5% with no volume discounts, that difference compounds indefinitely. Three details deserve attention before you commit. BYOK is paid-tier only, so using your own provider keys requires the $20 per seat plan. Failed BYOK requests fall back to system credentials and are charged against your balance, which is the kind of thing you discover on an invoice rather than in documentation. And zero data retention is not a default - it is a team-wide add-on metered at $0.10 per 1,000 successful requests, with provider allowlists priced the same way. Charging per request for privacy and for basic governance is an unusual choice and worth modelling if either matters to you.
Full Vercel AI Gateway review →Our verdict on Kong AI Gateway
Kong AI Gateway is a straightforward proposition that depends almost entirely on one question - do you already run Kong? If you do, this is close to an obvious choice. LLM traffic comes under the same policy, authentication, rate limiting and governance as the rest of your APIs, managed by the same platform team through the same control plane, rather than existing as a parallel system nobody owns. For an organisation where API governance is already a formal function, that consolidation is worth more than any LLM-specific feature. If you do not already run Kong, the calculation inverts sharply. Konnect is reported at roughly $500 to $2,500 a month against Cloudflare AI Gateway's $5 or self-hosted LiteLLM's infrastructure cost, and the LLM-specific capabilities are thinner than dedicated AI gateways. You would be adopting a substantial API management platform to solve a problem that cheaper, more focused tools solve directly.
Full Kong AI Gateway review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Vercel AI Gateway and Kong AI Gateway?
Vercel AI Gateway: Teams already deploying on Vercel who want provider-agnostic model access at list price with no markup, and who do not need governance features that carry a per-request charge. Kong AI Gateway: Organisations already standardised on Kong for API management, where bringing LLM traffic under existing governance matters more than LLM-specific features. Both sit in LLM Gateways, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Vercel AI Gateway or Kong AI Gateway?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Vercel AI Gateway bills on no usage metering and Kong AI Gateway bills on no usage metering. Published starting prices are $0 plus provider list price and Around $500/mo (Konnect) respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host Vercel AI Gateway or Kong AI Gateway?
Vercel AI Gateway: No or paid tier only. Kong AI Gateway: Yes, free. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.