Glossary
MCP gateway
A proxy between MCP clients and MCP servers that centralises authentication, routing, logging and policy for tool calls.
Checks run on our GPUs in Switzerland. Request payloads are not stored.Security
What MCP gateway means
An MCP gateway is a proxy that sits between one or more MCP clients and the MCP servers they use. Instead of every agent connecting directly to every server, traffic flows through the gateway, which can handle authentication, route calls to the right server, record what was called and apply policy.
Because every tool call passes through it, a gateway is a natural place to enforce rules: which tools a given agent may use, rate limits, and checks on individual calls before they are forwarded. A gateway can call a pre-execution guard for each call and forward, hold for approval or reject it depending on the verdict.
A gateway sees the call and whatever context the client sends with it. The more context it passes to a guard (the user’s request, recent turns, whether the call followed a tool result), the better the guard can judge intent and injection.
Related terms
How MCP gateway connects to the rest of the vocabulary.