Kong AI Gateway
Kong AI Gateway is an extension of Kong's enterprise API gateway, applying Kong's plugin model, policy enforcement and governance to LLM traffic. See konghq.com for the canonical description.
Comparison
Privian vs Kong AI Gateway
How Privian compares to Kong AI Gateway for privacy-first LLM routing, prompt-level data protection and sensitive-data masking.
Quick summary
At a glance
Kong AI Gateway
Choose Kong AI Gateway if you need enterprise API gateway governance, plugin extensibility and centralised policy across many services — extended to AI traffic.
Privian
Choose Privian if you want a privacy-first LLM gateway that masks supported personal and sensitive data before prompts reach the model.
Definitions
What each product is
Privian
Privian is a privacy-first LLM gateway. One endpoint sits in front of providers like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and supported personal or sensitive entities are masked with deterministic placeholders before any provider call, then restored in the response. Raw prompts and responses are not persisted; provider credentials are stored BYOK and decrypted only in-process at request time.
Comparison
Side-by-side comparison
Grounded in publicly available product positioning. Where we are not confident, we say so.
| Capability | Kong AI Gateway | Privian |
|---|---|---|
| Primary positioning | Enterprise API gateway extended to LLM traffic with plugins and policy | Privacy-first LLM gateway with prompt-level data protection |
| Privacy-first routing | Not a stated focus | Yes, core design goal |
| PII masking | Not a stated focus | Yes — supported personal/secret entities masked before provider call |
| Prompt-level data protection | Not a stated focus | Yes — deterministic placeholders, rehydrated in the response |
| BYOK | See vendor docs | Yes — provider keys stored AES-GCM, decrypted in-process |
| Gateway model | Enterprise API gateway with AI plugins | Hosted gateway with a small JSON contract |
| Prompt injection protection | Not a stated focus | No claim |
| Tool / function calling | See vendor docs | Not currently supported |
| Native streaming | See vendor docs | Not currently supported (artificial chunking only) |
| Open source | Kong Gateway has OSS editions; AI features vary by edition | Closed source (beta) |
| Observability | See vendor docs | Structural counters only; raw prompts never persisted |
| Pricing model | See vendor pricing | Usage-based plans, see /pricing |
| Enterprise orientation | Yes, enterprise-first | Designed for privacy-sensitive teams; HIPAA/SOC 2/PCI not claimed |
| Best fit | Large teams already standardised on Kong | Teams that need supported PII masking and provider-agnostic BYOK routing |
Architecture
Architecture differences
Kong AI Gateway
Kong's architecture is plugin-based and enterprise-API-gateway-first: a high-performance proxy with a large plugin ecosystem, extended with AI-specific capabilities for routing, auth and policy across providers.
Privian
Privian sits between your application and the model provider. Each request runs through detection → masking → BYOK provider call → rehydration in a single in-memory pass. The data plane is designed around minimising what reaches the provider rather than around routing breadth or orchestration.
Privacy & security
Privacy and security positioning
What Privian optimises for
- Prompt-level data protection
- Supported PII and sensitive-value masking
- Privacy-first routing with BYOK
- No raw-prompt persistence; structural observability only
What Privian does NOT claim
- Prompt injection or jailbreak defence
- HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certification
- Tool / function calling security guarantees
- Downstream model behaviour guarantees
When to choose
When to choose Kong AI Gateway
- You already standardise on Kong for API governance across services
- Plugin-based extensibility and centralised policy are key
- Prompt-level data protection can live in your own plugins or downstream
When to choose
When to choose Privian
- You want supported PII masking baked into the gateway by default
- You want a small JSON contract focused on the prompt path, not full API gateway features
- You want BYOK with no raw-prompt retention out of the box
Transparency
Honest limitations
Privian is in active development. Listing what it does not do today is part of how we earn trust — expect this list to shrink over time.
- No tool / function calling in the current beta
- No native provider token streaming yet (stream: true is artificially chunked)
- No OpenAI SDK drop-in compatibility
- No claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks
- No Norwegian fødselsnummer masking yet
- No custom user-defined entity types yet
- No HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certifications at this time
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Is Privian a replacement for Kong AI Gateway?
- No. Kong AI Gateway is part of a full enterprise API gateway. Privian is a focused privacy-first LLM gateway — much smaller surface, optimised for prompt-level data protection.
- Can Privian work alongside Kong AI Gateway?
- Yes. Kong can continue to handle service-wide API governance while Privian sits specifically on the prompt path to providers.
- Why would I choose a privacy-first LLM gateway?
- Enterprise API gateways enforce auth, quotas and routing, but do not by themselves mask sensitive content inside prompts. A privacy-first gateway adds that step explicitly.
- Who should use Privian?
- Teams where the differentiator is what the model sees, not the breadth of gateway policies.
- Does Privian block prompt injection?
- No. Privian focuses on prompt-level data protection — masking supported personal and sensitive values before they reach the model. It does not claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks. If injection defence is your primary requirement, a dedicated LLM firewall is a better fit.
- Does Privian support native streaming?
- Not in the current beta. The gateway accepts stream: true and returns artificially chunked text, but it does not pass through native provider token streams yet.
Plans & pricing
See pricing for Privian — a privacy-first alternative to Kong AI Gateway
BYOK, zero retention, prompt-level masking. Pricing is published transparently; Privian is in beta and limits may change.