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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
27th
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
9th
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 July 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 4.1%, 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 Enterprise4.1%
Frends0.7%
Other95.2%
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 user-friendly interface for constructing integration solutions is also a notable benefit."
"The product has valuable features for version control."
"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 price is reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"Kong Enterprise is a good API gateway and API management product which is based on lightweight and high-performance software."
"The features of Kong are plugin-based network services, and it enables us to include our security policy when creating customers."
"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"The solution provides good performance."
"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."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
 

Cons

"It is a new application and lacks some essential features compared to competitors."
"One of the primary areas for improvement is a more mobile-friendly interface for the control center."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"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 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."
"They could focus more on pricing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is quite fair."
"Recent changes in their pricing have removed this benefit, moving towards process-specific pricing."
"The licensing is expensive."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
36%
Educational Organization
11%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.