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Amazon API Gateway vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon API Gateway
Ranking in API Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Amazon API Gateway is 13.3%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.6%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective serverless routing with room for extended timeout settings
We are using API Gateway to route the traffic to our Lambdas. Every API pass is linked to some of the Lambdas. When traffic hits CloudFront, it redirects it to API Gateway, which then redirects it to the respective Lambda server. We have different kinds of services invoked through these Lambdas…
AmitKanodia - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides role-based access control and can be easily customized with Lua script
Kong is meant for north-south communications, so it will be interesting to see what solutions they can come up with in the realms of east-west communications, service-to-service communications, and Zero Trust architecture. I believe that if they can provide for these areas, then they will be able to solve the overall integration and security concerns for microservices architecture in general.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature in Amazon API Gateway is the itinerary release."
"It's flexible. It was valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a stable solution with an uptime of 99.99 percent."
"Amazon stack is easy to use in combination with other Amazon services, so it was a logical continuity."
"In terms of most valuable features, it would say that it is really easy to start working with it."
"The product is stable."
"It allows us to expose our APIs and provides tools for managing them."
"The most valuable feature is it has lots of integration."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"There are a few features that I like about Kong when it comes to authentication and authorization. Specifically, being able to use Kong for role-based access control (RBAC), and then further being able to integrate the RBAC mechanism with our enterprise directory, was very useful."
"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."
"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve signature validation."
"API Gateway could improve by allowing debugging capabilities, particularly when dealing with high volumes. At scale, it is expensive, and latency sometimes occurs."
"Since the first invocation of AWS Lambda takes more than 30 seconds because of Lambda's cold start, Amazon API Gateway blocks that resource, thereby aborting the invocation."
"API Gateway could improve by allowing debugging capabilities, particularly when dealing with high volumes."
"When using APIs, the manual bit for intermediate confirmation with VTL can be a challenge."
"There are certain restrictions that cannot be implemented without web access."
"From a use cases perspective, you need to have an internal and external gateway. AWS can only handle external traffic so has to be used together with another solution."
"The integration could be improved."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."
"There should be an easier way to integrate with other solutions, even though it's the same API solution layer. Comparability will be a good improvement."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"AWS charges for data ingress and egress, which could be further reduced. This would be helpful for customers dealing with large amounts of data coming in or going out from their systems."
"I rate the platform's pricing a five out of ten."
"There is an annual licensing cost to use Amazon API Gateway."
"It is somewhat costly, particularly when it introduces server-related features, which are often scheduled on our end."
"The pricing model for API Gateway is advantageous due to its serverless nature, as it depends on traffic volume."
"Azure products are more cost-effective than AWS solutions"
"It's cost-effective, even as our workload and the number of APIs we manage have increased."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The licensing is expensive."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Apigee or Amazon API Gateway?
Amazon API Gateway is a platform that supports the creation and publication of API for web applications. The platform can support thousands of simultaneous API calls, and it provides monitoring, ma...
How does Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy to implement and learn; it provides several options for deployment, (including ...
Which is better - Azure API Management or Amazon API Gateway?
If you use Azure products, API Management is a great solution. It solves many of the problems of externalizing web services. For example, when you need versioning, establish a developer portal and ...
How does Kong Enterprise compare with Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager was designed with its users in mind. Though it is a reasonably complex piece of software, it is easy to install and upgrade. While there are different things that ...
What do you like most about Kong Enterprise?
The tool's feature that I find most beneficial is rate limiting. In our usage, especially in the financial sector, we prioritize limiting API usage. This is crucial because we provide APIs to other...
What needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?
The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful. We use an open-source tool called Konga for basic dashboard needs, but it lacks support. It would be bette...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Fox Digital Consumer Group, iFlix, UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Miovision, Olympusat, PhotoVogue, Royale International Group, Veracode
Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon API Gateway vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.