Where Kong AI Gateway fits
Kong AI Gateway is the natural choice for organisations that already run Kong for API management and want to bring LLM traffic under the same governance. Its strengths are semantic caching, prompt guards, rate limiting and analytics delivered as plugins, self-hosted control for compliance, and one policy plane across every API — not just AI. If your platform team already owns Kong, adding AI routing there keeps auth, quotas and observability consistent with the rest of your estate.
Where Kunavo wins
Kunavo removes the provider accounts and the operations. There is nothing to deploy: top up one wallet and call Claude, GPT, plus image, video and audio, below each provider's list price depending on the model — no Anthropic Console, no Google Cloud project, no gateway to host, patch and monitor, one balance. Generation endpoints are first-class, the native Anthropic Messages API is on the same key, and checkout is Stripe-native with local methods. Kong gives a platform team a gateway to run and govern; Kunavo gives a product team a gateway to call.
How to pick (or use both)
Pick Kong AI Gateway if you run enterprise API management, need self-hosted governance over provider keys you already hold, and want AI under the same policy plane as the rest of your APIs. Pick Kunavo if you want zero-ops hosted inference on one prepaid wallet below list, first-class multimodal, and one balance to reconcile. They compose: point Kong AI Gateway at Kunavo (base URL https://api.kunavo.com/v1) to keep Kong's governance and semantic caching while inference runs through Kunavo's discounted catalog.
How you pay: Kong AI Gateway vs Kunavo
Kong is infrastructure you deploy, so nobody pays Kong for tokens. Kunavo's checkout is Stripe-native, so the list follows the buyer rather than our billing country, and every method tops up the same prepaid API balance. Everywhere Stripe reaches: cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, JCB, UnionPay); everywhere except India, also Link and, on devices where they are set up, Apple Pay or Google Pay. In the United States: Cash App Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, ACH bank debit (3–5 business days to clear) and crypto (stablecoins), plus Affirm on top-ups of $100 and up and Zip on top-ups of $100 to $1,500. Elsewhere the local rail appears with the local currency: Alipay and WeChat Pay in mainland China; KakaoPay, Naver Pay, PAYCO, Samsung Pay and Korean domestic cards in South Korea; UPI in India; Pix in Brazil; iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, EPS in Austria, MB WAY in Portugal, Satispay in Italy; BLIK in Poland; Bacs Direct Debit in the UK (a few business days to clear); and Pay by Bank for buyers in the UK, Ireland and Finland. Stripe converts the dollar amount into local currency on the checkout page, so nobody has to hunt for a card cleared for international purchases; its rate includes a 2–4% conversion fee, which paying in dollars avoids. The AI Gateway plugin routes to provider accounts you already hold, so the model spend stays on those accounts and those cards; what you pay Kong for is the gateway itself — Konnect Plus from $25 a month plus usage, self-serve with a 30-day trial, or an annual Enterprise contract (konghq.com/pricing, October 2026). Either way it is a second bill on top of every provider's. That is the right shape for a platform team that already holds those provider accounts, and the wrong shape for a developer who wants to be calling Claude ten minutes from now with nothing but a phone.