What Docker MCP Gateway does
The MCP Gateway is Docker's open source solution for orchestrating Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. It acts as a centralized proxy between clients and servers, managing configuration, credentials, and access control.
Why teams reach for it: Runs third-party MCP servers in isolated Docker containers that, by default, do not receive the user's host environment and can access host paths only through validated mounts.
Worth knowing
Pairs with the Docker MCP Catalog, listed under Registries & discovery.
How Docker MCP Gateway compares
Fields the vendor doesn't document are left blank here rather than guessed — a blank means nothing verified, not a "no."
- Transports Client Facing
- stdio, SSE, Streamable HTTP
- Transports Server Facing
- stdio, SSE, Streamable HTTP
- Server Aggregation
- Yes
- Hosts Stdio Servers Remotely
- Yes
- Terminates Auth
- Yes
- Rbac
- Yes
- Tool Filtering
- Yes
- Agent Identity
- Yes
- Policy Enforcement
- Built-in engine
- Audit Logging
- Yes
- Telemetry Output
- OpenTelemetry
- Also Proxies
- LLM inference, A2A, REST, gRPC
- Deploy Targets
- Docker, Kubernetes, managed cloud
- Self Hostable
- Yes
How will you route, mediate, and control traffic?
A gateway or proxy sits between clients and MCP servers to route traffic or add a control layer, without changing the servers themselves.