Kong

Kong acts as a sophisticated "smart receptionist" for your company's software, sitting between external users and your internal systems to manage communication. Its primary job is to handle security by verifying user credentials, traffic control through rate limiting to prevent server crashes, and routing to ensure requests reach the correct destination. Beyond these basics, it maintains detailed logs of all activity and allows you to easily add new features like authentication or caching through a system of plugins.

As of 2026, Kong has evolved into a powerful AI Gateway, which is particularly useful for businesses using models like ChatGPT or Gemini. In this role, it helps manage costs by tracking token usage, provides reliability by automatically switching to a backup provider if one goes down, and ensures data safety by scrubbing sensitive information before it ever reaches an external AI. By centralizing these tasks, Kong allows developers to focus on building their apps rather than worrying about the plumbing of the internet.