Introducing G2.ai, the future of software buying.Try now

Kong Gateway Reviews & Product Details

Kong Gateway Overview

What is Kong Gateway?

APIs run everything. They enable AI. They’re at the heart of modern applications and customer experiences. But the explosion of APIs and services creates challenges around complexity, scale, compliance, and security. Kong simplifies things. Kong is the foundation that enables any company to securely adopt AI and become an API-first company — speeding up time to market, creating new business opportunities, and delivering superior products and services. Kong’s easy-to-use cloud API platform delivers fast, reliable, secure digital experiences. Increase developer productivity, security, and performance at scale with the unified platform for API gateways, AI gateways, service meshes, and ingress controllers.

This product is included in:
Kong Gateway Details
Product Website
Show LessShow More
Product Description

Kong Gateway can run anywhere, in the cloud or on-premise - in a single, hybrid or multi-datacenter setup.

How do you position yourself against your competitors?

PERFORMANT
Dramatically reduce latency with sophisticated routing and load balancing. Employ rate-limiting to protect upstream services from being overloaded or to implement quality of service policies. Kong Enterprise is based on a lightweight proxy known to support thousands of transactions per second at sub-millisecond latency with minimal memory usage.

FLEXIBLE
Deploy Kong Enterprise in the cloud, on-premises or hybrid environments, including being deployed as a Kubernetes-native Ingress Controller that allows users to configure every aspect of Gateway configuration from plugins, health checks, load balancing and more.

EXTENSIBLE
Use one of the many plugins developed by Kong or our community to add the functionality you need. Can’t find what you need? Build custom plugins in Go, Javascript or Lua with our plugin development kit.


Seller

Kong Inc

Description

Powering the API World. No AI without APIs. Kong enables any company to become an API-first company. Kong’s unified cloud native API platform is easy to use and works in any environment — unleashing developer productivity, automating security, and boosting performance of APIs and microservices at scale.

Overview Provided by:

Kong Gateway Integrations

(9)
Verified by Kong Gateway

Recent Kong Gateway Reviews

Swaroop C.
SC
Swaroop C.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"Kong API Gateway: Love it or leave it"
Extendibility, deployment flexibility and scalability
Rakesh K.
RK
Rakesh K.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.5 out of 5
"Great tool and Market leader"
1.Ease of setup 2. lots of plugin functionality 3. Low latency 4.multiple deploying stragies
Verified User
A
Verified UserSmall-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
4.5 out of 5
"Friendly and powerful solution for APIs"
What I like most about Kong Gateway is its ability to scale and manage APIs efficiently. Its plugin-based architecture allows for great flexibility...

Pricing Insights

Averages based on real user reviews.

Time to Implement

4 months

Return on Investment

14 months

Average Discount

12%

Perceived Cost

$$$$$
View More Pricing Information

Kong Gateway Media

Play Kong Gateway Video
Play Kong Gateway Video
Play Kong Gateway Video
Play Kong Gateway Video

Official Downloads

Answer a few questions to help the Kong Gateway community
Have you used Kong Gateway before?
Yes

266 Kong Gateway Reviews

The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
Search reviews
Hide FiltersMore Filters
The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
266 Kong Gateway Reviews
4.4 out of 5
266 Kong Gateway Reviews
4.4 out of 5

Kong Gateway Pros and Cons

How are these determined?Information
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Pros
Cons
G2 reviews are authentic and verified.
NT
Network Engineer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

We use Kong Gateway for its flexibility and ease of integration. One of the best features of Kong Gateway is that it is a powerful plugin architecture that allows us to easily add different features like security, logging, etc. Also, the ease of scaling is another feature I like. It can be installed across multiple nodes and clusters. Its performance under heavy traffic is authentic. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

Not many points to dislike, but one of the challenges we face is that the new users sometimes may feel overwhelmed by the complex configurations and wide range of plugins that are provided. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

Kong Gateway addresses many crucial problems in our API management. One of the major challenges that we face is efficiently routing and managing API traffic across multiple services. Kong gives us a centralized medium to manage, source, and monitor API calls with ease. Secondly, Kong also ensures consistent security by providing a built-in plugin. This safeguards us from unauthorized access and potential attacks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MK
Head of Enterprise Integration
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

It has its roots in open source software

Its built on top of nginX - a world-renown reverse proxy

Its lightweight and expandable architecture - use only the modules (plugins) that you require

Its modular design is easy to understand and intuitive - learning curve is small. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

Out-of-the-box monitoring and observability support for which you need to buy their additional products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

We didn't have any API management platform and gateway. We started exploring options of which Kong community edition api gateway turned out to the most suitable candidate because it was light-weight, modular, fast and most importantly inherently scalable. We eventually ended up procuring the enterprise version of Kong. We primarily use Kong as a facade layer on top of our APIs that are consumed by multiple internal applications as well as by some third-party systems on a limited scale. it serves as a unified gateway for policing and monitoring all the API calls. It helps us authenticate and authorize API clients, enforce custom policies and functions via the modular plugins feature. One of the stand-out features is its intuitive interface that does not require steep learning-curve. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sai P.
SP
Senior Software Engineer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

Kong API Gateway makes life easier will all the existing capabilities that it provides through its user interface for Configuring Services, routes along with handling SSH requirements through Kong itself. It also helps in having a constant access to client servers that are on SSH but needs to be accessed while developing solutions to integrate with the apis where the ips are not static. This is one case that we use kong regularly for. I like the Request Transformation and Response Transformation feature of Kong the most. Its real pain doing that with other API Gateway solutions. If we go with native way of handling Request or Response transformations with Spring Cloud API Gateway etc.. we end with many issues that takes hell a lot of time to fix but with Kong it doesn't need to be deployed every time and with a save everything gets updated and fixing it is also gets easier and requires less effort. Also the logs of kong are also pretty much descriptive about the errors that we face in the Request routing failures, request tracking, identify the reason for failures etc.. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

Currently I dont have any dislikes regarding Kong API Gateway and I have worked with Community and Enterprise versions and never found any issues using it. It makes our life simple. I have recommended it at many places wherever there was a need to introduce API Gateway solution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

Kong API Gateway solved problems integrating with client apis by acting as a proxy to the development machines where kong was deployed on a development server where the access to client apis is only available to development server instead of developer machines. Using kong we resolved the issue of accessing urls on developer machines for easy integration and unit testing purposes. Also handling and managing client certificates becomes much more simpler with Kong rather than having them on the Microservice level. This also resolves the need of having different urls for different clients where there is only a single api exposed for all the clients on the microservice level. Also transforming request payloads and response payloads is a great use case as per me as this has resolved many such cases we had to handle custom request and response payload requirements for different clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

KD
Senior Software Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
Rating Updated ()
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

Kong is a one-stop solution for managing your microservice in the container world. Right from kong mesh to seamless experience with API management reduces the API development burden to market the product quickly as never before. It saves my organization from paying bills of many IPs addresses and make it easy implement for inbound traffic. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

Multi-tenancy of the kong control plane (IngressClass) needs to be documented. Kong API integration with ISTIO is a bit harder Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

Managing service-to-service communication in a Kubernetes multi-tenant environment.

Handling ingress requests and routing them to appropriate services.

It saves on exposing multiple IP addresses

Creating a kong mesh. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Computer Software
AC
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
Translated Using AI
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

What I like most about Kong Gateway is its ability to scale and manage APIs efficiently. Its plugin-based architecture allows for great flexibility and customization. Additionally, it offers easy integrations with existing systems and has an active community that facilitates the resolution of questions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

The least useful aspect is that the learning curve can be somewhat steep for new users. The documentation, although extensive, could be clearer in some technical sections. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

Thanks to Kong, we can now centralize traffic management, apply authentication, and rate limiting easily. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Swaroop C.
SC
Staff Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

Extendibility, deployment flexibility and scalability Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

1. Plugin limitations

2. Observability challanges Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

It solving api gateway, traffic management, Cross cutting problem like authentication, rate limit etc. , monitoring and tracing Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Saurabh J.
SJ
Product Security Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

Coming from a security engineer we can add custom logic in the form of kong gateway plugin. it's extensible to a decent scale Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

i found it difficult to implement on a personal research level. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

Plugins are defined in Lua, although a popular language however it isn't widely accepted and is on declining trends. It should be revamped to languages like Pyhthon, JS, C++, Java, Go etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

SG
Associate Platform Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
Rating Updated ()
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

All most everything. Like plugins and all Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

here comes the main thing come on to that what i dont like is that -

1. Lack of Client credential storage operation which we get in apigee and IBM connect.

2. Way worse developer portal in comparison of the other developer portals.

3. Frequent issues in syncing of Dataplane is a big concern.

4. the document should be more detailed and on point. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

There are plenty of problems that kong and konnect resolves, here are some key points -

1. providing multi environment deployment support is a must to have feature for all API gateways which kong is offering right now , for example deployment in - cloud,VMs, docker etc.

2. The request and response tranformation through kong is a point to be noted because it looks so clean and easy to do.

3.The secured connection among CRM's , data planes and control planes is a good thing too. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MV
Platform engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

obviously there are things that are likeable like -

1.the automation process of the deployment of entities and developer portal is great in kong konnect due to the Admin/Management API.

2.Its way easier to use in comparison of IBM connect , akana and Apigee.

3. It justifies its cost to the consumers as it is not the expensive to subscribe for.

4. The plugin stack of kong is great and still in progress of adding more plugins like with the implementation of AI.

5. The low latency for the API request is a great plus too. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

here comes the thing which are not talk about much about kong-

1. kong is yet to understand the requirements of the clients let alone the thought of implementing it, because it takes too much time (months)to solve a simple bug .

2. Delay in deliviring products like kong mesh and Api hub is a big negative for me.

3. they should tie with more CRM's to provide a better experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

kong as a API gateway and developer portal vendor do solves many problems of the clients like -

1. Traffic handling - It handles the incoming traffic in such a efficient way with low latency that is segment leading.

2. Monitization of the API's - It helps clients to monitize their API's through their developer portal.

3. Securing the end points - kong helps in restricting unauthorized access to the API's end points.

4. API's testing - insomnia tool of kong is such a great tool for unit testing because of the features like auto test creation and much more. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

GS
Site Reliability Engineer
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Seller invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about Kong Gateway?

Upsides:

Simplified API management (different country clusters)

Robust security features (Introspection Plugin)

Scalability and performance of DB-less mode Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Kong Gateway?

Downsides:

Steep learning curve for decalrative configuration as well as plugin usages

Limited documentation in some areas especially releated to plugins

Occasional stability issues with updates (version upgrade) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Kong Gateway solving and how is that benefiting you?

I feel that in the context of my work, Kong API solves and improves the below key areas

API Management: Simplifying the management of APIs, making it easier to control access, monitor usage, and ensure security compliance.

Security Enhancement: Providing robust security features like authentication, authorization, and rate limiting, which are crucial for safeguarding sensitive banking data and transactions.

Scalability: Enabling seamless scaling of API infrastructure to handle increasing loads and accommodate growth in customer interactions and transactions.

Interoperability: Facilitating integration between various banking systems and applications, ensuring smooth communication and interoperability across the bank's ecosystem.

Performance Optimization: Improving the performance of APIs by caching responses, reducing latency, and optimizing traffic routing, thereby enhancing the overall user experience for both customers and internal users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.