This guide shows how MCP gateways provide the standardized, secure foundation needed to scale MCP deployments. For a deeper look at proven design patterns and why enterprises are adopting MCP Gateways, download the Enterprise MCP Quick Start Guide.
I’ve spent the last few months writing about the pieces of an enterprise MCP strategy—from why a proxy matters to how to host MCP servers and how to evaluate gateways. The question I hear most often is simpler: What is an MCP Gateway, really—and do you need one? This post answers that in plain terms, based on what we’re seeing with real teams adopting the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Where teams are today
MCP has made it easy to wire AI clients and agents to tools like Slack, Outlook, Jira, Datadog, internal APIs, and data sources. That’s great for experimentation—until success arrives. Suddenly there are dozens (or hundreds) of MCP servers running across laptops, shared VMs, and vendor endpoints. Each client has its own config. Secrets live in too many places. Security can’t see what’s being accessed. Compliance has no reliable audit trail. IT is asked to support it all.
That’s the moment organizations realize they don’t just need more MCPs—they need a way to run them safely, consistently, and at scale.
So, what is an MCP Gateway?
When I say “MCP Gateway,” I mean a control plane for MCP. It sits between MCP clients (IDEs, chat apps, agent frameworks) and MCP servers (the connectors to your apps and data). The gateway gives IT a single place to onboard MCPs, set policies, manage how MCPs are run, and see what’s happening across the environment.
Yes, it routes traffic. But it’s not just a generic API gateway. It understands MCP semantics—sessions, tools, prompts, resources—and it exposes a user-facing catalog so people can actually find and use the right MCPs with the right guardrails.
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How it works in practice
A catalog you can trust. Instead of Slack threads and spreadsheets, users see a searchable catalog of MCP servers with descriptions, capabilities, supported clients, and IT-verified trust levels. Access is personalized: people only see what they’re allowed to use.
A proxy in the middle. This is important for both hosted and third-party or remote MCPs, the gateway proxies all traffic. That gives you one place to enforce policy, standardize auth, and generate audit logs. It also means no more unmanaged, direct client-to-server connections. (I covered the why in this proxy post.)
Hosting when you want control. For MCPs you choose to run, the gateway can host them as containers on your infrustructure (in Obot, that means connecting to a Kubernetes cluster). Spin up single-tenant instances (one per user) when you need isolation, or run shared services for MCP servers with support for multiple simultaneous users. Either way, they’re served through the same gateway pattern.
Identity-first access. Tie the gateway to your identity provider (GitHub, Google, Okta, Microsoft Entra). Apply group- and role-based policies so the right people get the right tools, with sane organization-wide defaults.
Visibility that survives audits. Because traffic and runtime are centralized, you get usage analytics, runtime logs for troubleshooting, and encrypted audit logs for compliance. Security teams can investigate without broad data sprawl.
How this differs from an API gateway
API gateways are great at HTTP routing. An MCP Gateway is MCP-native. It understands sessions and tools, issues per-user connection URLs that people can paste into AI clients, runs MCP servers when needed, and presents a catalog so users don’t guess which connector is safe to use. It’s a control plane, not just a reverse proxy.
What we’ve built in Obot
Obot MCP Gateway is open source and designed for the realities above. Admins can onboard MCPs via UI or GitOps, assign policies, and decide whether each MCP is proxied or hosted. For hosted MCPs, Obot launches containers on a connected Kubernetes cluster and serves them on demand. Every user gets a unique connection URL they can drop into clients or agents. Behind the scenes, Obot proxies remote MCPs to enforce policy and capture logs; audit logs are encrypted. We support fine-grained access controls, identity integrations, and roles (including Power User/Power User Plus for trusted self-serve and an Auditor role for review). Out of the box, you’ll find connectors for tools like Outlook, Slack, Atlassian, Datadog, and GitHub—and you can add more via UI or GitOps.
Onboard a couple MCPs, set a basic policy, and share unique URLs with a pilot team. From there, decide which services stay remote (proxied) and which you’ll host on Kubernetes. If you’re comparing options, this overview on evaluating gateways may help.
Bottom line
An MCP Gateway gives IT a safe, governed path from “we have some MCPs” to “we run MCP as a platform.” It’s the difference between ad hoc connectors and an environment your security, compliance, and developer teams can all rely on.
