MCP Gateway
An MCP gateway is a reverse proxy purpose-built for AI agent traffic. It sits between AI agents (MCP clients) and the tools they access (MCP servers), intercepting every tool call to enforce authentication, authorization, and policy before the request reaches the downstream app. It is the control plane for agent-to-tool interactions.
Why It Matters
Without a gateway, agents connect directly to MCP servers. Each connection is a separate trust boundary that the organization cannot inspect, restrict, or audit centrally. As the number of agents and tools grows, direct connections create an N-times-M problem: every agent-tool pair is an ungoverned access path.
An MCP gateway solves this by creating a single chokepoint. Agents connect to the gateway; the gateway connects to the tools. This architecture (sometimes called Architecture A or the protocol gateway pattern) means governance does not require cooperation from agent platforms or downstream apps. The gateway enforces policy at the protocol layer.
The term "agent gateway" has converged across the industry. Okta (Agent Gateway, GA April 2026), Microsoft (Agent 365), and multiple startups use the same vocabulary for the same architectural pattern: a proxy that understands agentic protocols and enforces policy on every tool call.