Non-EU vendorAPI ManagementHeadquarters: US

Kong Gateway: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Kong Gateway is an API gateway: a lightweight, cloud-native reverse proxy that routes and manages traffic to APIs and can be extended with plugins and modules. Kong Inc. offers it within a broader platform, Kong Konnect, for API management, AI management (including an AI Gateway for LLM traffic) and event management. You can operate the gateway yourself (traditional, hybrid or DB-less mode) or use it through Konnect, with Kong-managed cloud gateways or data planes on your own infrastructure.

Kong Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco (US), so the CLOUD Act may apply to its managed services. Kong publishes open-source projects, including Kong Gateway; some features require a paid licence. Konnect has geographic regions, including an EU region on AWS locations in Europe, and dedicated cloud gateways in several European AWS regions. Objects such as services, routes and consumers stay in the geo where they were created; only authentication, billing and usage data is shared between geos. Self-hosting is an alternative.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Kong Gateway pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

61 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (EU, US, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
Open source: low switching costs
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-675
Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	YesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	AMAZON-02 - Amazon.com, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	API Management
Type	Product
Website	konghq.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Kong Gateway

The European alternatives to Kong Gateway come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

15 European API Management vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Kong Gateway

Kong Gateway is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Kong Gateway hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Kong Gateway is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Kong Gateway together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Kong Gateway?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Kong Gateway include Fusio, KrakenD and Axway. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Kong Gateway?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Kong Gateway include Fusio, KrakenD and STOA. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Kong Gateway GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Kong Gateway is headquartered in US and hosts data in EU, US, OTHER. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in API Management

API Management: API gateways, API management, developer portals and API security. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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