Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise vs SwaggerHub comparison

Google and Kong are both solutions in the API Management category. Google is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Kong is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8. Google holds a 11.5% mindshare in APIM, compared to Kong’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Kong users who would recommend it.

Apigee

Read 89 Apigee reviews

14,622 Views
14,476 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 25 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

6,931 Views
6,931 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SwaggerHub

Read 10 SwaggerHub reviews

1,394 Views
1,394 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Apigee

Kong Gateway Enterprise

SwaggerHub

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Apigee, Kong Gateway Enterprise, and SwaggerHub based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in API Management.

To learn more, read our detailed API Management Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

API Management

August 2025

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Helped 866,391 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Apigee is 11.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.3%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SwaggerHub is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Apigee	11.5%
Kong Gateway Enterprise	7.3%
SwaggerHub	1.4%
Other	79.8%

API Management

Featured Reviews

ShawkyFoda

Senior Consultant at Goverment

Provides high visibility and control with good traffic monitoring

Analytics is one of the areas needing enhancement, specifically more visibility and control over traffic to improve capacity management and high availability. The replication process between Master and Slave for disaster recovery takes too long. Dependencies on analytics impact the performance of the user interface, which should be separate. The complex setup process on-premises, especially with multi-node installations, could also be improved. Additional control in product declarations, based on operations like POST and GET, is needed.

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Sudhanshu Dev

Senior Principal DevOps Engineer at barq

Custom plugin capability with enhanced high traffic handling and lightweight performance

We use Kong for our API gateway, handling all public traffic. It is an open-source tool, and even though we are a startup, it provides us with stability without incurring high costs initially Kong has helped us by performing smoothly even when we receive millions of requests, which prevents any…

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SwaminathanSubramanian

Director/Enterprise Solutions Architect, Technology Advisor at Kyndryl

Facilitating enterprise-wide API governance and management

Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account. The scalability also needs enhancement, as it becomes flaky under increased load. Additionally, the versioning management could be improved to be on par with source code management tools.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A simple platform that's easier to work with than IBM API Connect. Support for it is really good and gives it advantage over other providers."

"I have found the most valuable features to be tracing a proxy, and managing proxy versions and revisions via the Edge UI component."

"The drag-and-drop and click-through functionalities, alongside minimal code requirements, make Apigee valuable. It is intuitive and user-friendly."

"The analytics feature is quite good."

"The tool is one of the earliest API management products and is good. It reduces the Time To Market aspects of products."

"I'm still evaluating, but in terms of overall performance and stability, it's quite good."

"The most valuable feature of the current version of Apigee, such as Apigee Edge, is that the maintenance and scalability of the service are not our responsibility. As a SaaS platform, Google takes care of it, ensuring the system is stable. Another valuable feature is the ability to customize the platform extensively. We can add JavaScript functionality to cater to any use case that is not available out of the box."

"The most valuable features of Apigee for me are analytics, security, ease of use, and integration capabilities."

More Apigee pros

"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."

"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."

"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 solution provides good performance."

"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."

"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."

"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."

"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"The scalability is endless."

"The most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."

"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."

"It is a stable solution."

"The tool's most valuable feature is licensing."

"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."

"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."

More SwaggerHub pros

Cons

"Integration should be improved."

"It needs predictive analysis of consumption."

"We've encountered challenges in leveraging Connect functionality, prompting us to explore additional tools, such as Fergus, to address implementation and security issues."

"I would like them to add features, such as caching and mediation policies."

"The integration could be improved within the solution. There is a need to pay more attention to this."

"The technical support could be improved because their response time is slow."

"Apigee does not have a testing feature."

"It is an expensive solution."

More Apigee cons

"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."

"The tool needs improvement in UX."

"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."

"Kong Enterprise needs to improve its pricing, which starts at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pricing should be based on API usage rather than monthly. It should improve its documentation as well."

"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."

"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."

"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."

"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."

"The scalability aspect of SwaggerHub can be improved. It becomes a bit unreliable when the load is increased and isn't up to par with expectations for scalability."

"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"

"Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account."

"The review process should be improved. There seem to be some gaps, at least for us, for the editing part because we would like to have a full request review mechanism. They support some comments, but it is really hard to manage those comments. We would like to use the full request. Therefore, we are now looking to integrate with repositories. It has integration with Bitbucket and GitHub, but we have some internal constraints, and we need to move some of the repositories to GitHub. Our source code is on-premise in Bitbucket, and it was a bit of a problem for us to integrate. Now we are transitioning our repositories to GitHub, and hopefully, we can enable the integration. This will probably solve the problem with the review and approval. Its customization should also be improved. There are limitations around the support for the developer portal. There should be more customization options for the website that you can use as a developer portal. Currently, it has only Swagger UI with minimal customization. You cannot actually add additional pages and documentation for explaining concepts and general things. That's why we have started to look around to see what other tools are doing. They should also allow tagging on the API. We would like to add some tagging on the API to reflect certain things. Currently, any metadata that you would like to have has to be a part of the spec. You cannot do anything else. It should also have support for Open API 3.1, which was released at the beginning of the year. It would be great to be able to switch to that."

"SwaggerHub could be improved with better integration for tools."

"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."

"It could be more intuitive compared to one of its competitors."

More SwaggerHub cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is extremely expensive."

"Since it was acquired by Google, we can get a license based on our requirements and the cost level will depend on cloud access and support."

"We have a contract for three years. I don't know the cost."

"The iicense is subscription-based."

"The cost increases as the usage increases."

"If the budget is not a concern then I will choose to go with Apigee over WSA-2, but if it is then I would prefer the latter solution."

"Compared to other products, Apigee had higher pricing."

"The product's pricing is fair. You need to pay additional costs for the support."

More Apigee pricing and cost advice

"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."

"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."

"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."

"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."

"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."

"The tool is cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	65

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

How does Apigee differ from Azure API Management?

Apigee offers both cloud-based and on-prem options while Microsoft Azure API Management currently only offers a clou...

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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...

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What do you like most about Apigee?

We can customize the dashboard.

See all answers

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 sof...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?

More plugins for additional integrations would be helpful and openness for traditional development languages, such as...

See all answers

What do you like most about SwaggerHub?

The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?

Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?

I started using SwaggerHub in its previous version, SmartMiner, with a tool called SoapUI. I used it to create mock w...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Apigee

Compared 22% of the time

IBM API Connect vs Apigee

Compared 11% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs Apigee

Compared 8% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs Apigee

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Apigee

Compared 6% of the time

More Apigee Competitors

WSO2 API Manager vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Kong Konnect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

IBM API Connect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Microsoft Azure API Management vs SwaggerHub

Compared 24% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs SwaggerHub

Compared 11% of the time

Postman Enterprise vs SwaggerHub

Compared 10% of the time

Stoplight vs SwaggerHub

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs SwaggerHub

Compared 5% of the time

More SwaggerHub Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apigee

August 2025

Download Apigee product report

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

August 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

API Management

August 2025

Download SwaggerHub product report

Overview

Apigee is a platform for developing and managing APIs. Apigee offers an interface for your core services by wrapping them with a proxy layer which is then accessed by other developers. With Apigee, you can design and build APIs and then securely share their services and data without exposing any code.

Because app developers make HTTP requests to an API proxy rather than directly to your services, your services are separated from the developers. All the developer needs to know is the URL of the API proxy endpoint, necessary query parameters, authorization credentials (if they exist), and the response data format.

The API proxy isolates the app developer from your backend service. Therefore, you are free to change the service implementation if the public API remains consistent. By maintaining a consistent frontend API, existing client apps will continue to work regardless of changes on the backend.

Key capabilities of the Apigee API management platform include:

Security: Protect APIs, messages, and backends with configurable policies such as OAuth, API key verification, XML/JSON threat protection, and access control.
API gateway: Secure and mediate the traffic between clients and backends, and between a company’s APIs and the developers who use the APIs.
Developer portal: Attract and engage application developers, enabling them to discover, explore, purchase, and test APIs and register to access and use the APIs.
API console: The console helps developers learn and work with APIs.
API lifecycle management: Manage the process of designing, developing, publishing, deploying, and versioning APIs.
Automated documentation: Automate the development of API documentation and software development kits.
Machine learning: Utilize machine learning and analytics to generate actionable insights and reports.

API monitoring: Apigee offers monitoring tools for API troubleshooting, security, and optimization.

Reviews from Real Users:

Apigee stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its rich developer portal, its advanced analytics, and its central monitoring system.

Carlos R., a software architect at Caja Los Andes writes, “The central monitoring feature is the most valuable. It also provides security for the APIs and high availability for our use cases. Apigee is the best product in the industry in comparison to other API management solutions. It helps in fast development, which is a top point. It also supports a lot of industry standards and has excellent documentation.”

An associate vice president at a tech services company notes, “The analytics function and the developer portal are the two valuable features of Apigee. The analytics part is very good, and the developer portal is quite rich in features. The authentication mechanisms are quite easily built into Apigee, which is something that most of the other products have also now started supporting.”

Google

Kong delivers a next generation API platform built for modern architectures. With a lightnight-fast, lightweight, and flexible core, Kong delivers sub-millisecond latency across all your services. Kong's is deployment-, vendor-, and pattern-agnostic, allowing you to run your services how you want, where you want, and with who you want - from baremetal to cloud, monolith to microservices, service mesh, and beyond.

Kong

SwaggerHub is an integrated API Development platform, built for teams, that brings the core capabilities of the Swagger framework to design, build, document and deploy APIs. SwaggerHub enables development teams to collaborate and coordinate the entire lifecycle of an API with the flexibility to integrate with the toolset of your choice.

SmartBear

Sample Customers

Adobe, advance.net, Amadeus, AT&T, Bechtel, Belly, Burberry, Chegg, Citrix, Dell, eBay, Equifax, GameStop, First Data, Globe, HCSC, Intralinks, Kao, Meredith, Mitchell, Orange, Pearson

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner

Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in API Management. Updated: August 2025.

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