Tyk governs AI traffic that goes through its gateway. Willow finds and governs the AI your employees actually use, on their devices, in their browsers, and inside Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT, even when it never touches a gateway.
Employees now use AI in many places. Developers add MCP servers to Cursor or Claude Desktop. Staff paste text into ChatGPT. Teams run agents in the background. Most of this does not go through an API gateway.
Willow is built for this. It finds the AI tools, MCP servers, skills, and browser AI use on employee devices. It then lets IT control that use with identity, policies, approvals, and audit logs, even if nobody registered the tool first.
This gives IT one place to see and control how employees use AI. You do not have to register each AI tool first, and you do not have to limit employees to a short list of approved apps. Willow works with the AI apps they already use, including Claude, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and with the identity provider you already run, such as Okta or Microsoft Entra ID. It fits into your current setup instead of replacing it.
Tyk is an API management platform. It has added AI features to its gateway. Its MCP and model controls work on traffic that is connected to and sent through that gateway.
Tyk controls AI traffic that goes through its gateway. Willow finds and controls the AI your employees use, even when it does not go through a gateway.
Both products have an MCP gateway, access policies, rate limits, audit logs, and private deployment. The main question is how much of the company's AI use each one can see.
This guide compares what each product can see and control, where Willow goes further, when Tyk is worth adding, and whether you need both.
Willow's Scan Agent runs on managed macOS, Windows, and Linux devices. Linux is turned on by request. The agent finds MCP server settings in Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Windsurf, and other tools. It also finds skills, agent instruction files such as CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md, and installed AI coding tools.
The AI Discovery dashboard shows each MCP server with the AI apps and devices that use it, plus a risk indicator. IT gets a full list of what is running without waiting for employees to report it.
The list stays current. The Scan Agent runs a quick scan every 5 minutes and a full scan every 24 hours. Changes you make in the dashboard reach devices on the next scan, without redeploying anything.
Tyk's MCP Gateway supports remote servers over Streamable HTTP only. A local stdio server must be connected through a stdio-to-HTTP bridge and added to Tyk before Tyk can control it.
Willow checks prompts and attachments in web AI chats before they leave the browser. Its guard hooks run inside Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex and check each prompt and file tool call before the agent acts. In total, Willow covers Claude Web, Claude Desktop & Cowork, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Pi, Gemini Web, and ChatGPT Web. Coverage is measured from real traffic, not from settings, so you see which apps are actually protected, not just which ones were set up.
These all use the same set of guards. A rule you write once, such as "redact API keys", applies to MCP traffic, to coding agents, and to prompts in ChatGPT. You do not maintain separate policies for each app.
Tyk's controls apply to requests that reach its gateway. If an employee's browser or AI app sends a request straight to a model provider, Tyk does not see it.
In Willow, you can set a tool to Require approval. A person then approves each call before it runs. This lets agents work with sensitive systems without giving them free rein. Approval requests reach people in Slack, in the Chrome extension, or in the Willow app.
Tyk AI Studio 2.2 is still a release candidate. It lets the model ask the user for approval or a form response inside Tyk's chat. This works only in Tyk's chat, not in the AI apps employees already use.
Employees connect approved tools themselves through Willow's Connect Panel and marketplace, which has 1,000+ connectors, 50+ skills, and 10+ plugins. IT approves the catalog. Employees stop filing tickets for each new tool, and IT stops being the bottleneck for AI adoption.
Tyk's AI Portal is a self-service developer portal. Users browse models, MCP servers, and data sources, then request access by creating an App.
In Willow, bots and agents have identities with named people responsible for them. A machine user has named owners and a secret that can be rotated. If its credential appears in an audit log, you know who owns it. A background agent has its own identity, credentials, and a set list of tools and skills.
When a person leaves, Willow follows your identity provider. With SCIM, when you remove a person in Okta or JumpCloud, Willow deactivates their account automatically, and their access through Willow ends with it. Nobody has to remember to clean up AI access by hand.
Willow gives users MCP servers and tools through groups. Admins can turn single tools on or off. Conditions then decide which calls to a tool are allowed. A condition can check the call's arguments or look up data in the target system. For example, a condition can check whether a Google Drive file carries a confidentiality label and block the call if it does. If the check fails or times out, the call is blocked, so a broken check never opens access by mistake. Today, conditions can block calls.
For traffic that goes through its gateway, Tyk's policies are more detailed. They can control single tools, resources, prompts, and JSON-RPC methods for each consumer key.
Willow's Radar scores your AI security posture in five areas:
Each measure shows your target and a typical value for companies like yours. Each measure also maps to controls in frameworks such as OWASP and NIST, and you can use these mappings as audit evidence for ISO 42001 or EU AI Act audits. Security leaders get one report they can take to the board or an auditor.
Willow shows where AI spend goes. Its dashboard lists your estimated monthly spend, the main cost drivers, and the changes that would save the most.
Willow can also stop spend in the AI apps employees use. When a model reaches its monthly budget, the Usage Hooks plugin stops new prompts to that model and shows the user a cheaper model to switch to, so they can keep working instead of stopping. This works on every prompt in Cursor and from the start of each session in Claude Code. Codex does not report the model it uses, so budgets cannot stop Codex prompts. Budgets work once the plugin is installed on users' machines.
Tyk AI Studio can block a gateway request that would go over budget, but only on Enterprise. The Community Edition records budgets for reports but does not block requests. When several gateways are under heavy load, spending can go slightly over the budget before the totals update. In all cases, Tyk budgets only cover model requests sent through Tyk's gateway.
Willow's rate limits are per user. A policy of 100 calls per hour gives each user their own 100, so one person's runaway agent cannot use up everyone else's limit. Policies can be narrowed to chosen groups and MCP servers.
Willow sends AI activity to the tools your security team already uses, including Splunk, CrowdStrike, Google SecOps, Panther, Grafana Loki, S3, and any OTLP or webhook target. AI activity shows up next to everything else they watch, with no new console to check.
Willow's AI Discovery lists the MCP servers, skills, and AI tools on developer machines across the company. You can install the Scan Agent with the device management tools you already use: GPO, Intune, IRU, Jamf, JumpCloud, or Mosyle. On Linux, you can use configuration management tools.
After discovery, policy rules let IT allow, warn on, or block each tool for chosen users, groups, or devices. IT can then replace unapproved servers with approved ones from the catalog.
Files like SKILL.md, Cursor rules, CLAUDE.md, and AGENTS.md tell coding agents what to do and which tools to use. They are stored on developer machines. Willow finds them. A gateway does not see them.
Every machine user has an owner, and every background agent has its own identity. When an agent acts, IT can see who owns it and what it was allowed to do.
Background agents can also run in your own Kubernetes cluster, one pod per agent. Willow stays the single place where their prompts, tools, skills, and rules are managed.
At Wix, Willow runs on the company's existing Okta groups at scale:
Asaf Yonay, Head of AI Core at Wix, says: "Willow is what made it possible to move that fast without slowing down our security posture."
Tyk is worth considering only if one of these describes your project.
Willow runs as SaaS, Hybrid, or On-Prem. SaaS needs no infrastructure from you. Hybrid runs tool calls in your Kubernetes cluster, so API keys, database credentials, and internal data never leave your network, while Willow manages the admin console, SSO, and updates. On-Prem runs the whole platform in your cluster. Tyk's self-managed and air-gapped options run on your own infrastructure.
Yes. Willow covers employee AI use across the company, and Tyk can run alongside it if your platform team also needs API management or gateway budgets for applications.
Both products can apply policies to MCP traffic. Decide which product owns identity, policies, and audit logs for each MCP server. For employee and agent access, this is usually Willow, because it already knows who the user is and which tools they use.
If your team does not need API management, Tyk adds a second gateway to run, and it still only sees AI use that goes through it.
"Product to consider" shows the better fit for an IT or security team that controls employee AI use.
If employees can start using AI tools without telling IT, start with Willow. Add Tyk only if your platform team also needs to manage APIs through a gateway.
Tyk controls APIs and AI traffic that go through its gateway. Willow finds and controls the AI your employees use on their devices, in their browsers, and in the AI apps they already use, including tools IT does not know about.
Tyk's MCP Gateway works with remote HTTP servers that have been added to it. A local stdio server needs a bridge and has to be added to Tyk first. Willow's Scan Agent finds local MCP servers, including stdio servers, on managed macOS, Windows, and Linux devices.
No. Willow finds tools on devices and applies guards inside Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex and in the browser, so employees keep using the apps they already use. You can also run MCP servers through Willow's gateway when you want central control of them.
Only for employee AI governance. Willow is not a general API management tool. If your platform team needs to manage REST, GraphQL, or gRPC APIs, Tyk can run alongside Willow.
Both, in different places. Willow shows spend by cost driver and can stop prompts in Cursor and Claude Code when a model reaches its monthly budget. This needs the Usage Hooks plugin and does not cover Codex. Tyk AI Studio blocks gateway requests over budget, but only on Enterprise.
In Willow, yes. Set a tool to Require approval, and a person approves each call in Slack, the Chrome extension, or the Willow app. Tyk AI Studio 2.2, still a release candidate, adds approval prompts inside Tyk's own chat.
With SCIM, removing the person in Okta or JumpCloud deactivates their Willow account automatically, and their access through Willow ends.
Willow holds SOC 2 Type II and GDPR, and shares SOC 2 documents on request. Tyk's public trust center lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 9001:2015, GDPR, and DORA.
Yes. Willow runs as SaaS, Hybrid, or On-Prem, and On-Prem has no outside dependencies at runtime, so it suits air-gapped networks. Tyk supports self-managed and air-gapped installation, and its gateway core is open source under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
As of September 2026, Willow is free for up to 15 users and 15 integrations, with a team plan in the product and Enterprise through sales. Tyk gives prices on request for its Core, Professional, and Enterprise plans.
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