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Actualyze vs Kong AI Gateway

Actualyze. Approvals that scale to thousands of people, and personal data masked from the first request.

Kong AI Gateway is the AI gateway in Kong's Konnect platform, and Actualyze is the AI gateway and AI governance platform for the enterprise. With Actualyze, your teams get the best model routing in the field, and finance gets a month it can close.

Competitor facts checked against Kong AI Gateway's documentation on .

In short

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each gateway's governance

Actualyze

Your organization

policy from Team Owners and Budget Managers

Inference

  • public APIs
  • brokers
  • GPU clouds
  • your own servers

Kong AI Gateway

Konnect

policy from attached AI Policies

Inference

  • major model APIs
  • Ollama and vLLM servers

Side by side

Kong AI Gateway is the AI gateway in Konnect, Kong's API platform. Operators define AI Models, each a single endpoint that spreads requests across one or more upstream models, and govern them with access lists, consumer groups, and AI policies.

Actualyze and Kong AI Gateway, side by side
ActualyzeKong AI Gateway
Pricing and routing
Where cost figures come from

Priced per model and provider. Unknown cost is never $0

Operators enter input and output prices on each target

A target is one model at one provider inside a Kong AI Model.

One model, many providers

One model through any provider the caller can use

One Kong AI Model can hold targets at several providers

Kong's own example fails over between OpenAI and Anthropic targets.

Routing across models

Sizes each request, picks the cheapest model strong enough

A Virtual Model, one name over several models, picks only among models the caller can already use.

One balancing method per Kong AI Model picks the target

Methods include weighted, lowest latency, lowest usage or cost, semantic, and priority failover.

Provider prompt caches

Stays on the cached model unless moving saves money

Consistent hashing sends one header value to one target

Kong lists it for session persistence and cache-hit optimization.

Access and spend
Who approves access and spend

Each model names its own approver. Budget Managers own spend

One AI Gateway Admin role writes all gateway settings

Those settings include model access lists and spend limits.

Budgets and limits

Budgets nest. A call past the limit is rejected

Token or cost limits per model, consumer, or consumer group

Once a limit is reached, Kong rejects the next request.

Chargeback and the month

Finance closes the month on one statement

A cost for each request feeds reports and spend limits

Protection
On from the first request

Personal data masked from the first request

The default guardrail masks personal data in prompts and responses, and nobody can delete it.

A guardrail policy covers what it is attached to

A policy covers all AI traffic only when set as global, which is off by default.

Weakening protection

Protection can't be quietly switched off

Konnect keeps a log of config changes for 7 days

Kong doesn't document a required reason or an alert when a policy is weakened.

Records and reach
Audit record

Each routed call records which model answered and why

The record can't be edited, and it names the model the app asked for.

AI logs name the model requested and the one that answered

The provider, token counts, and cost are logged too.

What the controls reach

Any LLM, anywhere, behind an OpenAI- or Anthropic-style API

Your own servers too, through a relay you run that only connects outward.

Provider APIs and servers you host, such as Ollama or vLLM

Bringing a model online

Each model goes live only after its own approval

An AI Model takes effect when it is created or updated

Deployment
Deployment

Hosted today. On-prem deployment coming in 2027

Managed through Konnect, with data plane nodes you run

Self-hosted deployments are also supported.

Approvals

Actualyze. The leading delegation and approval system for AI spend.

Actualyze

use Model A
raise the Support budget
Support's Team Ownernamed by Model A's rule
Engineering's Budget Managerowns the parent budget
Model A
Engineering
Support

Actualyze sends each ask to the person who owns it.

Kong AI Gateway

use Model A
raise the Support budget
an AI Gateway Adminhas write access to the gateway's configuration
the AI Model's access list
the cost limit policy

A Kong AI Gateway Admin edits model access and the cost limit.

Actualyze hands every decision to the person who owns it, with no admin bottleneck.

A team asks for a new model and a bigger budget, and Actualyze sends the two asks to two different people. Each model names its own approver, often the Team Owner who leads that team. The extra budget goes to the department's Budget Manager, who controls the money it comes from. Budgets nest, so a department can hand spend down to its teams without losing sight of the total.

Konnect's AI Gateway Admin role writes all gateway settings.

Kong's gateway settings include the token and cost limits and each AI Model's access list. Kong doesn't document a way for a team to request model access and have it approved.

Protection

Actualyze. Personal data is masked from the first request.

Actualyze

your app sends

Reply to jane.doe@example.com

new workspacedefault masking

Model A

Reply to [REDACTED:EMAIL_ADDRESSES]

Model B

Reply to [REDACTED:EMAIL_ADDRESSES]

Actualyze masks every model in a new workspace by default.

Kong AI Gateway

your app sends

Reply to jane.doe@example.com

AI PII Sanitizerattached to this AI Model

Model A

Reply to PLACEHOLDER1

globaloff by default

Kong AI Gateway masks the email where the policy is attached.

Actualyze masks personal data for every team on day one, with nothing to switch on.

A default guardrail covers every Actualyze workspace from the day it's created, masking personal data in prompts and responses, and nobody can delete it. When the first prompt on the first day carries a customer's email, the provider gets it already masked. Teams can layer stricter guardrails on top, and the default keeps covering everyone underneath.

A Kong guardrail policy covers what it is attached to.

Kong's guardrail policies, such as prompt guards and the AI PII Sanitizer, cover all AI traffic only when marked global, and that setting is off by default. A narrower Kong policy of the same type replaces a global one.

Routing

Actualyze. The best model routing in the field.

Actualyze

a customer's question
support-answeran Actualyze Virtual Model
a routing model we train sizes itthen picks the cheapest model strong enough
  • Model A$0.15 / Mnot strong enough
  • Model B$0.60 / Mstrong enough
  • Model C$3.00 / Mstrong enough
    • OpenAI
    • Azure
    • Anthropicstandby
    • Bedrockserving
    • Vertexstandby
    • Google
lowest cost, strong enoughModel B through Bedrock

Actualyze answers with the cheapest model strong enough.

Kong AI Gateway

a customer's question
a Kong AI Model
its balancer picks one targetweighted, lowest latency, usage, or semantic match
  • Model A
  • Model B
  • Model C
    • OpenAI
    • Anthropic
    • Gemini
that target's answer

Kong AI Gateway returns the answer from that target.

Actualyze matches each call to the cheapest model strong enough, kept current as models change.

An Actualyze Virtual Model is one model name for several models. For each call, a routing model we train judges how hard the request is, and Actualyze sets that against every model's strength and price. Routine traffic lands on inexpensive models without a single weight to tune. Each model runs over several provider routes, one serving and the rest on standby.

Kong's load balancer picks one target to answer each request.

A Kong AI Model, which Kong calls a virtual model, spreads requests across its targets, each one model at one provider. Kong's balancer picks the target by weight, by lowest latency, or by semantic match, which compares the prompt with each target's description.

Pricing

Actualyze. Priced at what you really pay, down to the call.

Actualyze

modelgpt-4-class

throughOpenAI

requestfirst call

input / output rate

$2.50 / $10.00 per M

sourcethe provider's list price, until you confirm yours

Actualyze prices the first call before anyone enters a rate.

Kong AI Gateway

modelgpt-4-class

throughOpenAI

requestfirst call

input_cost2.50
output_cost10.00

sourcetyped into each target of the AI Model

Kong AI Gateway prices it from the rates typed on its target.

Actualyze keeps the price list for you, so new models are priced from the first call.

The moment a team starts using a model, Actualyze prices each call from the provider's list price, and finance sees real cost from the first request. When your negotiated rate is confirmed, later calls switch to it.

Kong AI Gateway prices each call from rates entered on its target.

Kong AI Gateway operators enter input and output prices on each target of an AI Model. Kong AI Gateway calculates every request's cost from those prices, and its cost limits enforce against that figure.

Evaluate

Six questions every AI gateway should answer live

If your AI gateway can't tell you who approved a model or what last month cost each team, it's just moving traffic. Put these questions to every vendor on your list, and ask to see each answer working in the product. Actualyze answers every one today, and each comes with a check you can run in your own trial.

  1. Who approves a team's access to each model?

    The leading delegation and approval system for AI spend starts here. In Actualyze, each model names its own approver.

    Request a model that needs approval as a team member, and check who receives the request and where the decision is recorded.

  2. What decides which model answers each request?

    In Actualyze, a routing model we train sizes each request and picks the cheapest model strong enough, the best model routing in the field.

    Send an easy question and a hard one to one Virtual Model, then see which model each was routed to, and why.

  3. What happens to a call when its budget runs out?

    Actualyze rejects it before any model is contacted, so a budget is a real limit and never a surprise on the bill.

    Set a small test budget and confirm the next request is rejected once it reaches its limit.

  4. Does an unknown cost ever show up as $0?

    An unknown cost is never $0 in Actualyze, which marks it unpriced and flags it for FinOps, so no spend hides behind a zero.

    Connect a third-party endpoint with no catalog price, call it, and check the call reads unpriced, not $0.

  5. What is protected before anyone writes a policy?

    Personal data is masked from the first request in Actualyze, in prompts and responses, by a default guardrail nobody can delete.

    Open a new workspace's guardrails before writing any policy, and confirm the default guardrail is already enforcing.

  6. Can finance close the month on AI spend?

    Finance closes the month on AI spend with one Actualyze statement, a row for each budget, reviewed and then settled.

    Generate a statement for a month with traffic, then move it from draft to reviewed to settled.

Common questions

What is the difference between Actualyze and Kong AI Gateway?
The difference between Actualyze and Kong AI Gateway is who sets the rules. In Actualyze, the Team Owner a model's rule names approves access to it, and a Budget Manager approves spend from each budget. In Kong AI Gateway, policy comes from the AI Policies attached to each AI Model, which AI Gateway Admins write.
Can we keep Kong Gateway for our APIs and send AI traffic through Actualyze?
Yes, and each app moves over with three small changes. Kong Gateway keeps serving your other APIs, while an app swaps in Actualyze's API key, base URL, and model name. From that call on, the app has the whole package for governing AI, end to end.
Can Actualyze keep our apps running through a provider outage?
Yes, Actualyze routes around a provider outage while your apps keep calling the same model name. Once a Workspace Admin groups one model across its providers, Actualyze moves a call to another provider of that model, one the caller already has access to. A Virtual Model can also fall back down an ordered list of models when one stops answering.

Sources

18 pages, checked

Kong, Kong AI Gateway, Konnect, and other product names mentioned here are trademarks of their respective owners. Actualyze is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

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Give every model an approver and every call a budget.

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