Model Context Protocol
MCP Gateway
One secure, governed entry point in front of all your MCP servers.
As organisations deploy more MCP servers, connecting every AI client to every server directly stops scaling. An MCP gateway sits in front of your MCP servers as a single entry point — routing requests, enforcing authentication and policy, and giving you the observability and control production needs.
Talk to Ethisys about MCP →What is an MCP gateway?
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets AI applications connect to tools and data via MCP servers. An MCP gateway is the equivalent of an API gateway for MCP: a managed layer that aggregates multiple MCP servers behind one endpoint and governs access to them.
Instead of each AI client holding credentials and connections to dozens of servers, clients connect to the gateway, which routes to the right server and applies security, policy and monitoring centrally.
What an MCP gateway does
- Aggregates many MCP servers behind a single endpoint
- Authenticates and authorises clients
- Routes and filters which servers and tools a client can reach
- Enforces rate limits, quotas and policy
- Provides logging, tracing and observability across all MCP traffic
- Centralises secrets so credentials never live in clients
- Adds resilience — retries, timeouts and failover
Why you need an MCP gateway
Direct client-to-server MCP is fine on a laptop; it becomes a governance problem at enterprise scale. A gateway is how you adopt MCP safely: least-privilege access to tools, an audit trail of every call, centralised credentials, and the ability to add or remove servers without touching every client.
How Ethisys builds MCP gateways
Ethisys designs and builds MCP gateways and the governance around them — authentication, tool-level authorisation, observability and credential management — for organisations rolling MCP out across teams and systems. Our own platform is MCP-first, so we build this for real.
Frequently asked questions
What is an MCP gateway?
A managed entry point in front of multiple MCP servers that handles routing, authentication, policy and observability — like an API gateway, but for the Model Context Protocol.
How is an MCP gateway different from an MCP server?
A server exposes tools and resources. A gateway sits in front of many servers, aggregating and governing access to them.
Do I need an MCP gateway?
If you run more than a few MCP servers, or need security, audit and central control, yes — a gateway is how you scale MCP safely.
What does an MCP gateway secure?
Authentication and authorisation of clients, tool-level access control, centralised credentials, rate limiting, and a full audit trail of MCP calls.
Related
Building MCP into production?
Ethisys is an AI agency that designs and builds MCP clients, gateways and middleware for real systems. Our own platform is MCP-first.
Talk to Ethisys → AI agent development →