MCP Gateway

Top 5 MCP Gateways in 2026

Top 5 MCP Gateways in 2026
TLDR: MCP (Model Context Protocol) gateways are now essential infrastructure for teams running LLMs in production. This roundup covers the top 5 platforms - Bifrost, Cloudflare, Vercel, LiteLLM, and Kong AI ranked by capability, developer experience, and production readiness.

What Is an MCP Gateway?

An MCP gateway sits between your application and LLM providers, handling routing, authentication, observability, and tool/context management all through a standardized protocol.

Your App → MCP Gateway → [OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini / ...]
                ↓
     [Auth · Routing · Logs · Tools · Rate Limits]

Quick Comparison

Platform Open Source MCP Native Best For
Bifrost ✅ ✅ Full-stack AI teams needing deep observability
Cloudflare ❌ ✅ Edge-first, globally distributed deployments
Vercel ❌ ✅ Frontend/Next.js teams shipping fast
LiteLLM ✅ ✅ Multi-provider routing & cost management
Kong AI ❌ ✅ Enterprise API governance at scale

1. Bifrost by Maxim AI ⭐ Editor's Pick

Platform Overview

Bifrost is an open-source LLM gateway built for teams that need more than just routing. It offers end-to-end observability, evaluation, and MCP-native tool orchestration — all in one platform. Unlike infrastructure-only gateways, Bifrost connects your gateway layer directly to your evaluation pipeline, so you can measure what's actually happening in production.

                    ┌─────────────────────────────────┐
                    │           BIFROST                │
  Incoming Request ─►  Route  │ Auth  │ MCP Tools      │
                    │    ↓         ↓         ↓         │
                    │  Logs │ Evals │ Traces │ Alerts   │
                    └─────────────────────────────────┘
                              ↓
              [OpenAI · Anthropic · Gemini · Bedrock]

Features

  • MCP-native orchestration — Connects agents and tools using the Model Context Protocol out of the box
  • Unified provider routing — One API key to route across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Bedrock, Groq, and more
  • Built-in observability — Traces, logs, and session replays without a separate monitoring tool
  • LLM evaluation — Run automated evals directly from the gateway layer; no pipeline rewiring needed
  • Prompt management — Version, test, and deploy prompts with zero downtime
  • Fallbacks & retries — Automatic failover across providers when a call fails
  • Cost tracking — Per-project, per-model spend visibility in real time
  • Self-hostable — Deploy on your own infra; no vendor lock-in

Best For

  • AI product teams that want gateway + observability + evals in one place
  • Teams moving from prototype to production who need audit trails and quality controls
  • Organizations with data residency or compliance requirements (self-hosted)

2. Cloudflare AI Gateway

Platform Overview

Cloudflare's AI Gateway runs at the edge across 300+ global locations, giving teams ultra-low latency routing with built-in caching, rate limiting, and analytics.

Features

  • Edge-native MCP routing with global CDN distribution
  • Request caching to cut LLM costs on repeated queries
  • Real-time analytics and usage dashboards
  • Native integration with Cloudflare Workers AI

Best For

Teams already on Cloudflare's ecosystem who need globally distributed, low-latency AI inference with minimal setup.

3. Vercel AI Gateway

Platform Overview

Vercel's gateway is purpose-built for frontend developers shipping AI features inside Next.js and React apps, with a focus on DX and speed to production.

Features

  • Drop-in integration with the Vercel AI SDK
  • MCP tool support with streaming out of the box
  • Per-route model configuration for Next.js apps
  • Automatic scaling tied to Vercel deployment infrastructure

Best For

Frontend and full-stack teams building AI-powered web apps on the Vercel platform who want zero-config AI routing.

4. LiteLLM

Platform Overview

LiteLLM is a popular open-source gateway focused on multi-provider LLM routing with strong support for cost controls and budget management across teams.

Features

  • 100+ LLM provider integrations via a unified OpenAI-compatible API
  • Team-based budget limits and spend tracking
  • MCP-compatible tool routing
  • Lightweight proxy server, easy to self-host

Best For

Developers and platform teams that need flexible, cost-aware multi-model routing — especially in resource-constrained or multi-tenant environments.

5. Kong AI Gateway

Platform Overview

Kong extends its enterprise API gateway with a dedicated AI layer, bringing governance, security, and policy enforcement to LLM traffic at scale.

Features

  • LLM traffic policies, rate limiting, and RBAC
  • MCP support through Kong's plugin architecture
  • Enterprise-grade audit logging and compliance controls
  • Integrates with existing Kong-managed API infrastructure

Best For

Large enterprises with existing Kong deployments that need to bring AI traffic under the same governance umbrella as their REST/gRPC APIs.

How to Choose

Do you need evals + observability bundled in?
        YES → Bifrost
        NO  ↓

Are you on Vercel/Next.js?
        YES → Vercel AI Gateway
        NO  ↓

Do you need edge/global distribution?
        YES → Cloudflare AI Gateway
        NO  ↓

Is cost control across many providers the priority?
        YES → LiteLLM
        NO  → Kong AI Gateway (enterprise governance)

Bottom Line

MCP gateways have become non-negotiable for production AI systems. If you're an AI-native team building agents or evaluation pipelines, Bifrost gives you the most complete toolkit without stitching together five separate tools. For edge deployments, Cloudflare wins on latency. For frontend teams, Vercel is the fastest path. For multi-provider flexibility, LiteLLM. And for enterprises with strict governance needs, Kong AI.

Last updated: February 2026

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