AI Gateway: secure, govern and scale your AI traffic
Bring crucial, scalable control and observability to your AI infrastructure and traffic.
THE PROBLEM
Why AI traffic is outside your control
AI adoption is evolving faster than most governance strategies can cope with. New models, providers, and AI agents are appearing across enterprise operations, often outside platform team oversight. Without a centralized control plane, every new integration increases operational risk, compliance exposure, and cost, leaving critical AI traffic beyond your visibility and control.
01
Model and provider sprawl across teams
Different teams choose different models for different use cases, creating a fragmented AI estate that’s difficult to manage. As providers, open-source models, and internal LLMs multiply, so do inconsistent policies, duplicated and shadow integrations, and operational complexity. A single governance layer helps standardize access without limiting developer choice.
02
Runaway token costs with no budget guardrails
AI spending can escalate quickly when usage is decentralized and unmonitored. Without token-aware controls, budget enforcement, or cost visibility, it’s impossible to understand where spend is coming from or stop it spiralling out of control. Centralized policies let you monitor, allocate, and control AI costs from a single place.
03
No security, prompt protection or governance
Every AI request carries potential security and compliance risks. Sensitive data, prompt injection, and inconsistent access controls can expose your organization if requests bypass governance. Applying consistent security policies, authentication, filtering, and audit controls at the AI gateway protects AI interactions without slowing development.
04
Zero visibility into who is calling which model
When AI traffic flows directly to providers, platform teams lose the ability to monitor usage, investigate issues, or demonstrate compliance. Without a unified audit trail, you can’t see which user, application, or AI agent is accessing which model. Centralized observability restores accountability with complete usage, performance, AI model routing, and cost insights.
WHAT TYK AI GATEWAY DOES
One control plane for every model, LLM, and AI agent
Tyk’s secure AI gateway enables you to enforce enterprise-grade security, governance, and observability while still supporting developer choice and velocity. Platform teams can use a single control plane to manage AI traffic across every model, LLM, provider, and AI agent, bringing essential consistency and ensuring everything remains secure and compliant.
AI Gateway01
Connect to any model or provider
02
Route, load-balance, and fail over automatically
03
Semantic caching to cut latency and cost
Why choose Tyk AI Gateway?
Why enterprises choose Tyk as their AI gateway
TRUST TRANSFER
Model and provider sprawl across teams
- Extend the same trusted API security, governance, and operational controls to AI traffic.
- Build on your existing Tyk investment without introducing new platforms, tools, or processes.
UNIFIED MANAGEMENT
One platform for REST, GraphQL, MCP, and LLMs
- Manage APIs and AI endpoints through a single control plane with consistent policies.
- Simplify operations by applying the same governance across REST, GraphQL, MCP, and LLMs.
SECURITY & GOVERNANCE
Auth, guardrails, rate limits, and quotas
- Enforce authentication, authorization, prompt guardrails, and policy controls on every AI request.
- Protect applications with rate limits, quotas, and governance that scale across models and providers.
SOVEREIGNTY
Self-managed, hybrid, or cloud — deploy anywhere
- Deploy where your business, data, and compliance requirements demand.
- Choose self-hosted, hybrid, or cloud-native environments without compromising control or flexibility.
HOW IT WORKS
AI Gateway capabilities at a glance
Everything you need to secure, govern, optimize, scale, and observe AI traffic in one platform. From model connectivity and intelligent routing to observability, cost controls, and enterprise security, Tyk’s enterprise AI Gateway helps you manage AI with confidence.
Token quotas and usage-based limits
Control AI spend with token quotas, usage-based limits, and policy-driven controls that keep costs predictable without slowing innovation.
Full L7 analytics and OpenTelemetry
Gain complete visibility into AI traffic with Layer 7 analytics, OpenTelemetry integration, and detailed insights into usage, performance, and behavior.
Start free, scale to enterprise
Get started with open source and upgrade seamlessly as your AI gateway architecture grows, with enterprise capabilities available when you need them.
Which teams benefit
AI gateway use cases by team
Give every team the tools they need to adopt AI safely and efficiently. Enterprise-grade AI gateways deliver centralized governance for platform teams, self-service access for developers, and the visibility needed to control cost, security, and compliance.
Platform and infrastructure
Centralized AI governance
Provide a single control plane for managing AI traffic across every model, provider, and environment. Platform teams can enforce consistent security policies, governance, routing, and observability while reducing operational complexity and giving the business a scalable foundation for enterprise AI adoption.
Developers
Self-service access to approved models
Enable developers to build with AI faster without compromising the way you govern and monitor. Provide self-service access to any approved model and provider through standardized APIs, allowing teams to experiment, ship new features, and switch LLM when needed while platform teams maintain centralized control.
FinOps and security
Cost, compliance, and risk control
Control AI costs and reduce organizational risk with centralized policies, usage visibility, and governance applied via the AI gateway. Monitor token consumption, apply quota and rate limiting enforcement, protect sensitive data, and maintain detailed audit trails to support compliance while ensuring AI usage remains secure, predictable, and accountable.
How it compares
Tyk vs Cloudflare vs Kong AI Gateway
Choosing an AI gateway isn’t just about connecting to LLMs; it’s about finding the right balance of flexibility, governance, and deployment options. Compare Tyk with Cloudflare and Kong to see how each platform approaches AI management and AI gateway pricing. Discover why organizations that need portability and enterprise control choose Tyk.
| Capability | Tyk AI Gateway | Cloudflare AI Gateway | Kong AI Gateway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connect to multiple LLM providers | |||
| Self-managed deployment | — | ||
| SaaS deployment | |||
| Hybrid deployment | Limited | ||
| Open source foundation | — | ||
| REST, GraphQL, MCP, and LLM management | AI-focused | ||
| Enterprise governance and security | |||
| Semantic caching | |||
| Full L7 API analytics | Limited |
When Tyk is the better fit
Tyk is the ideal choice for organizations that want to manage APIs and AI from a single platform without sacrificing deployment flexibility. Whether you’re running self-managed, hybrid, or cloud environments, Tyk delivers enterprise-grade governance, security, and observability while avoiding vendor lock-in and giving developers the freedom to build with the models they choose.
Where it sits in the stack
The full Tyk AI stack
Tyk AI Gateway provides the traffic control layer that sits between applications and AI services. It provides an AI security gateway while complementing the roles of Tyk AI Studio, which governs what happens inside the LLM loop, and Tyk MCP Gateway, which governs the infrastructure underneath the tools.
FAQs
What is an AI gateway?
An AI gateway is a control layer that sits between your applications and AI models. Instead of every application connecting directly to multiple LLM providers, an AI gateway provides a single endpoint for routing, security, authentication, rate limiting, observability, and policy enforcement. It helps platform teams standardize access to AI services while giving developers the flexibility to use different models and providers. As AI adoption grows, an AI model gateway becomes the foundation for secure, governed, and scalable AI operations.
What's the difference between an AI gateway and an API gateway?
AI API gateway confusion isn’t uncommon, but the two fulfill distinctly different purposes. An API gateway manages and secures API traffic between clients and backend services. An AI gateway builds on those capabilities with AI-specific features such as model routing, token-aware policies, semantic caching, provider failover, and LLM observability. While an API gateway remains the foundation for managing APIs, an AI gateway is designed specifically for the operational, security, and governance challenges introduced by AI workloads and large language models. This makes the AI gateway vs API gateway decision an easy one for organizations, based on their specific needs.
Is there an open-source AI gateway?
Yes, open-source AI gateways provide a flexible way to secure and manage AI traffic without locking you into a single vendor or deployment model. Tyk’s AI capabilities are built on its open-source gateway foundation, allowing organizations to start with open source and adopt enterprise features such as advanced governance, analytics, and centralized management as their AI platform grows. This approach gives teams flexibility without sacrificing production readiness.
How much does an AI gateway cost?
AI gateway pricing varies depending on deployment model, scale, and feature requirements. Open-source options can be deployed at no licensing cost, while enterprise editions typically add capabilities such as centralized management, advanced security, analytics, and support. The right choice depends on your operational requirements, compliance needs, and expected AI traffic. Many organizations also realize significant savings by using AI gateways to reduce token consumption through intelligent routing, caching, and usage controls.
How do I get started with Tyk's AI Gateway?
Tyk’s model-agnostic AI Gateway is part of the Tyk API management platform. If you’re an existing Tyk customer, you can get started with Tyk AI Gateway by contacting your account team. If you’re new to Tyk and currently evaluating it, you can start with a self-managed trial or request a demo to see the AI Gateway in action. Tyk’s team is on hand to help, with guided tutorials and extensive documentation to support you as you move from proof of concept to production.
Book a demo
Start for free
Get started with Tyk’s AI Gateway
Tyk’s solutions architects are here to help. Start with a 30-minute demo as they walk you through the highly performant AI gateway’s capabilities and features. You’ll learn to authenticate, authorize, proxy, orchestrate, mediate, route, throttle, rate limit, monitor, observe, and everything else you need to do to start governing your AI traffic in a way that’s secure and scalable.