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Frends 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

Frends
Ranking in API Management
28th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Frends is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 3.9%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise3.9%
Frends0.7%
Other95.4%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Lauri Vanhanen - PeerSpot reviewer
Development Manager at ELO
Integration platform has simplified logistics workflows and has streamlined complex order handling
The best aspect is that it is very easy to use. The UI is very intuitive, and you can learn it very quickly because the basic principles are straightforward and easy to search. Frends has a great UI, but the UI is missing role-based permissions. You can filter your integrations by roles and add several users to roles, but in the UI, the functionality for this kind of management feature is not optimal. User management or user role management could be improved.
KS
Business Consultant at Ernst & Young
Modernization projects have progressed well but documentation and security guidance still need work
Bringing in additional features to Kong Gateway Enterprise would not necessarily help it. Improving the existing features, increasing security, and adding robustness would be more beneficial. The focus should be on stabilizing the product, improving it, and increasing the documentation. Kong should focus on how the product can be self-onboarded or self-implemented, as this would ease and help customers significantly. The necessary deployment of Kong Gateway Enterprise, API management, and guidance on how customers can use it or improve that area would be helpful. Security is a major concern, especially with new security architecture coming into place. These are the areas that should be prioritized. Beyond these areas, I do not see anything lacking. Kong Gateway Enterprise is quite comprehensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best aspect is that it is very easy to use."
"One of the benefits is the speed of creating something new. Second, it's replacing the old integration quite fast. Then it is like the visibility of the integration and the possibility to see what is happening in the integration."
"The product has valuable features for version control."
"The user-friendly interface for constructing integration solutions is also a notable benefit."
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."
"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 companies and must ensure they adhere to their allocated usage limits. Without rate limiting, there's a risk of excessive usage, which could result in significant costs."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
 

Cons

"One of the primary areas for improvement is a more mobile-friendly interface for the control center."
"It is a new application and lacks some essential features compared to competitors."
"Logging should be better."
"Another enhancement includes the monitoring part. It would be nice to have some sort of maybe mobile app on which we can see how integrations are running if there are some problems, and getting those alerts on the mobile would be really nice."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"The main challenge, in my opinion, is the price. It's difficult to convince our management to approve the budget to purchase it from our vendor. There are no technical problems."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"Mainly, I would say they need to improve the updates. The updates of the OS for Fortinet seem to require a lot of bandwidth."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Recent changes in their pricing have removed this benefit, moving towards process-specific pricing."
"The pricing is quite fair."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The licensing is expensive."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
34%
Educational Organization
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Frends?
Logging should be better. Third-party software logging should be integrated into the monitors of the front-end integrations, but it does not monitor the third-party connectors through that. Those l...
What is your primary use case for Frends?
We had many different applications for Frends. For file transferring of different types, we modified the files and then used it for logistical processes including warehousing, inventory checkups, a...
What advice do you have for others considering Frends?
If you need an integration platform, I would recommend Frends. I give this product a rating of 8 out of 10.
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 needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?
Bringing in additional features to Kong Gateway Enterprise would not necessarily help it. Improving the existing features, increasing security, and adding robustness would be more beneficial. The f...
What is your primary use case for Kong Enterprise?
Our primary use cases for Kong Gateway Enterprise are modernizations, migrations, and digitalizations of financial institutions. These are the primary areas we are looking for.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Frends vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.