What are the best Runlayer alternatives in 2026?

Runlayer is a security-first Model Context Protocol (MCP) gateway with an endpoint agent attached. It authenticates, scans, and logs every tool call an AI agent makes. The alternatives in this roundup offer similar capabilities with different strengths and weaknesses. Some go deeper on security controls, some operate via a different architecture, some pair MCP governance with an LLM gateway, and some govern any agent without a per-framework integration.

The sections below explain what Runlayer is, why evaluations move on from it, and how five alternatives compare: Speakeasy, MintMCP, Kong, LiteLLM, and Willow.

What is Runlayer?

Runlayer is an AI control plane built around an MCP gateway and an endpoint agent. Every MCP request passes through a single-tenant AWS gateway, hosted by Runlayer or in your own account, that authenticates, authorizes, scans, and logs it. People authenticate through SSO and SCIM. Agents authenticate as Agent Accounts, OAuth clients created inside Runlayer, currently in beta.

Why do teams look for Runlayer alternatives?

Runlayer fits a security organization that wants layered ML detection on MCP traffic and reach into laptops and browsers. Evaluations move on for four reasons:

• A deeper security focus. Agent identity that resolves in Okta or Entra rather than inside the vendor, sensitive-data detection beyond Runlayer's 13 PII types, detection rules you can write and replay against real sessions before enforcing them, enforcement on Linux endpoints (AI Watch detects there but does not enforce), and ISO 27001, which Runlayer does not list.
• A different architecture. Runlayer is closed source, anchored to single-tenant AWS, and custom servers are hand-packaged containers deployed to vendor-managed infrastructure. Teams that want open source, GCP or Azure, servers generated from their API contracts, or an extension of the API gateway they already run need a different shape.
• An LLM gateway alongside MCP governance. Runlayer's LLM Gateway is early access and self-hosted only, so model routing, failover, semantic caching, and budgets on model spend are not in today's product.
• An agent-agnostic solution. Sessions and AgentGuard need hooks in a supported client, the Hooks SDK covers four frameworks, and native connectors configured directly in a client bypass the gateway. Teams with custom agents or a changing client mix want governance any MCP client inherits at the protocol layer, with agent identity that resolves in the identity provider whatever runtime the agent uses.

Which Runlayer alternative should you choose?

Each alternative fits one of the three architectures mapped in which MCP gateway architecture do I need: infrastructure, governance, or a hybrid that also supplies the servers.

Speakeasy: the AI control plane with directory-native identity

Speakeasy is the alternative when the evaluation widens from "secure the MCP servers we have" to "govern every AI surface and supply the tools our agents need." The MCP gateway is one part of an AI Control Plane that connects AI clients to tools, secures every interaction, controls who reaches what, and observes usage and cost across the organization. Identity resolves to the directory: people sync from Okta or Entra through directory sync, Agent Identity, in early access, syncs from providers such as Entra Agent ID or is created in Speakeasy, and one permission model covers both, so "who is this principal" always answers to the identity provider rather than to a Runlayer-native Agent Account. Grants carry the tool's disposition from its MCP annotations, so a support role can read from the billing server and be denied on a refund with no change to the server, and a separate deny pass always wins.

The security controls are ones you author and test. MCP server review gathers an evidence dossier on every server and requires a written rationale for approval. Risk policies run a prompt injection heuristic with an opt-in LLM judge, and the detector catalog covers secrets, financial data, PII, government identifiers across the US, UK, EU, and APAC, and healthcare identifiers across prompts, assistant messages, tool calls, and tool responses. Natural-language guardrails replay against recent live sessions to produce a scorecard before they enforce, and custom detection rules in CEL are tested against a real session. Enforcement reaches any MCP client through standard OAuth 2.1 authorization at the gateway, agent hooks in Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Cursor, Codex, and OpenCode, a device agent on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and a LiteLLM integration on model traffic. Custom MCP servers are generated from the API contracts your teams already maintain and hosted under the same governance. Costs, budgets, and Agent Sessions key on directory attributes, and Speakeasy holds SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001.

MintMCP: the closest like-for-like governance gateway

MintMCP is the alternative that keeps Runlayer's shape: a governance MCP gateway paired with an endpoint product, sold to security-led buyers. Its managed hosted connectors remove connector operations, employees reach a self-serve MCP store after SSO, and Agent Monitor hooks coding agents on laptops, including GitHub Copilot CLI. Its trust center lists SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, and CASA Tier 2, and Okta shops get Cross App Access. The trade-offs largely rhyme with Runlayer's: agent identities are native to MintMCP with no matching directory record, custom servers are written and hosted by hand rather than generated from a contract, the most expressive policy layer is customer-authored JavaScript middleware, and ISO 27001 is not listed. If you are weighing the two managed governance gateways against each other, Speakeasy vs MintMCP covers the MintMCP side in depth.

Kong: MCP from the API management side

Kong approaches the problem from API management, so for an enterprise already running Kong it is the alternative that adds no second gateway. Its AI gateway extends the platform they use for API traffic to model traffic, routing requests across LLM providers through one API with semantic caching, prompt guards, and token-based rate limiting, and the Kong MCP Registry, in Tech Preview inside Kong Konnect, pairs a server catalog with the AI gateway for runtime enforcement. The appeal is consolidation: one vendor for API traffic, model traffic, and MCP traffic, with familiar operations. The caution is maturity and depth. The MCP-specific surface is still in preview, and API-management platforms in this category have historically been stronger at connecting and routing agents than at controlling them. Coming from a Runlayer evaluation, test the tool-level access control, threat detection, and audit story against your requirements rather than assuming parity with the routing story.

LiteLLM: the open-source LLM proxy with an MCP gateway

LiteLLM is the other alternative that starts from model traffic, and it is already the front door for that traffic in many organizations: one open-source proxy exposing an OpenAI-compatible API across more than 100 providers, with retries, fallbacks, virtual keys, and per-key and per-team budgets. Its MCP gateway extends the proxy to tool traffic. MCP servers are added in the UI or in config.yaml over streamable HTTP, SSE, or stdio, with OAuth 2.0 to upstream servers in both PKCE and client-credentials flows. Access is controlled by key, team, and organization, tool calls are logged, and spend is tracked per MCP server. On the model path, a guardrails framework runs providers such as Presidio, Lakera, Bedrock, and Azure Content Safety before, during, or after the call, and a Generic Guardrail API accepts a control plane of your choosing, which is the hook the Speakeasy LiteLLM integration uses. It self-hosts anywhere, including air-gapped, and its enterprise page lists SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001, with SSO, SCIM, and audit logs in the paid tier. The boundary as a Runlayer alternative is the governance model. The principal on every decision is a LiteLLM virtual key rather than a directory identity, there is no endpoint agent or browser layer, and there is no equivalent of ToolGuard or AgentGuard scanning tool definitions and session trajectories. It fits teams that want tool access to ride the proxy they already operate, with detection layered on through its guardrail hooks.

Willow: a governance gateway with an enablement layer

Willow, which rebranded from Webrix in 2026, is the alternative that most closely matches Runlayer's endpoint-plus-browser reach while lifting the AWS constraint. It wraps its gateway in self-serve enablement: a marketplace with a claimed 1,000+ pre-built connectors, endpoint sensors that surface unapproved tools and shadow MCP servers, and a Chrome extension as a browser policy layer. Every gateway call passes identity, group-based access, and request and response guard checks, per its documentation. It deploys as SaaS, self-hosted on AWS, GCP, or Azure, or air-gapped, and reports SOC 2 Type II. The identity model is the thing to weigh: the gateway mints and validates its own tokens matched to Willow user records, with SSO upstream, rather than evaluating a directory principal at call time. SCIM and guardrails are enterprise-gated per its pricing. See Speakeasy vs Willow for the line-by-line version.

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