IBM API Connect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

IBM and Kong are both solutions in the API Management category. IBM is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3, while Kong is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8. IBM holds a 6.1% mindshare in APIM, compared to Kong’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Kong users who would recommend it.

IBM API Connect

Read 76 IBM API Connect reviews

6,992 Views
6,782 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 25 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

6,931 Views
6,931 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM API Connect

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM API Connect and Kong Gateway Enterprise are key players in the API management market. While IBM API Connect is notable for its robust security integration and advanced features, Kong Gateway Enterprise is valued for its plugin architecture and excellent performance.

Features: IBM API Connect offers robust security features, integration with IBM DataPower, and advanced analytics capabilities. It provides comprehensive environments for API development and a customizable developer portal. Kong Gateway Enterprise includes a plugin-based architecture, excellent plugin support, and strong integration abilities with various tools. It also features role-based access control and effective rate limiting.

Room for Improvement: IBM API Connect needs better integration with other platforms, improved stability, and enhanced support documentation. Users desire more customization options and streamlined administrative processes. Kong Gateway Enterprise could improve its pricing structure, developer portals, customer support, and scaling processes, alongside enhanced traffic analysis features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM API Connect supports varied deployment options, including on-premises, private and public clouds, and hybrid environments. While it offers comprehensive support, users report occasional delays and document deficiencies. Kong Gateway Enterprise offers flexible deployment across multiple environments, with generally positive support experiences although response times and costs are noted concerns.

Pricing and ROI: IBM API Connect is often viewed as costly, particularly for smaller implementations, yet it offers substantial ROI due to its extensive features. It provides on-premises and cloud-based pricing models, typically on a subscription basis. Kong Gateway Enterprise presents competitive pricing through its open-source version, but the enterprise edition has high costs that may not favor startups, although its functionality justifies its value for larger deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM API Connect vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

6.9

IBM API Connect enhances profitability and efficiency by reducing development time, improving security, and enabling seamless system integration.

Sentiment score

7.6

Kong Gateway Enterprise offers scalability, advanced features, and reduces detection time, supporting efficient API delivery with economic benefits.

Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.4

IBM API Connect support is proactive and expert but variable in speed, with regional availability challenges noted by users.

Sentiment score

6.9

Kong Gateway Enterprise support is helpful and responsive, but users note delays and desire quicker, more capable assistance.

Support is excellent when it comes to APIC.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

The technical support from Kong Gateway Enterprise would be rated about eight, as we missed local technical support.

Evgeny Shkard

Enterprise Architect at El Al

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.4

IBM API Connect offers excellent scalability through on-premise and cloud solutions, supporting enterprise-level operations and customization features.

Sentiment score

7.2

Kong Gateway Enterprise is praised for scalability across applications, but smaller entities face challenges due to resource constraints.

With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

The scalability of this solution would be rated about eight or nine.

Evgeny Shkard

Enterprise Architect at El Al

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.3

IBM API Connect is generally stable and reliable, especially in government and banking, despite occasional upgrade issues.

Sentiment score

7.9

Kong Gateway Enterprise is stable with few issues, excellent architecture, and recommended strong configuration for optimal performance and versatility.

The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Room For Improvement

IBM API Connect needs better integration, automation, monitoring, documentation, and usability, facing issues in setup, costs, and support.

Kong Gateway Enterprise needs better pricing, integrations, API management, documentation, customization, support, and AI features for improved user experience.

Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

More plugins for additional integrations would be helpful and openness for traditional development languages, such as .NET, because many enterprises are looking for .NET solutions or incorporating with .NET solutions.

Evgeny Shkard

Enterprise Architect at El Al

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Setup Cost

IBM API Connect offers scalable solutions with high costs, suitable for large enterprises, available in SaaS and on-premise versions.

Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing is competitive, especially compared to Apigee, with value dependent on organizational needs and region.

Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Valuable Features

IBM API Connect excels with strong security, integration, usability, analytics, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing API management and monetization.

Kong Gateway Enterprise provides scalable, secure API management with integration support, high performance, and adaptability via open-source community backing.

It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.

KANCHAN CHALASANI

Software Engineer IV at Royal Cyber Inc.

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM API Connect report

The most valuable features of Kong Gateway Enterprise are its seamless integration with Kubernetes and cloud, many plugins that can be incorporated in a solution, and its incorporation with low-code function systems.

Evgeny Shkard

Enterprise Architect at El Al

For more quotes and insights, download the Kong Gateway Enterprise report

Categories and Ranking

IBM API Connect

Ranking in API Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Ranking in API Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.1%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.3%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise	7.3%
IBM API Connect	6.1%
Other	86.6%

API Management

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan

Solutions Architect at Synechron

Offers basic API orchestration and provides robust security and governance features

While Azure API Management offers configurable scalability, IBM API Connect relies on Kubernetes clusters. This might seem manual and require defining cluster instances upfront, but it's completely customizable and not on-the-fly scaling. It's completely custom-driven, not on-the-fly scaling, which some may consider cumbersome. Overall, I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Almost all applications we've been exposing lately go through this middleware, so it's used extensively. There are around sixty applications directly using it, but six Kubernetes clusters serve those applications. It's heavily used for integration, including system-to-system integration and product integrations. Our usage has been increasing year-on-year based on our needs.

Read full review

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…

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Insurance Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	58

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	19

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM API Connect?

Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM API Connect?

Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments. I don't deal with licensing, but compared to other IBM products, the licensing is not significantly higher.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM API Connect?

When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ ( /categories/message-queue-mq...

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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 ...

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 prioritize limiting API usage. This is crucial because we provide APIs to other...

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What needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM DataPower Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 27% of the time

Apigee vs IBM API Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM API Connect

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs IBM API Connect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM API Connect Competitors

WSO2 API Manager vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Kong Konnect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect

September 2025

Download IBM API Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

September 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Overview

IBM API Connect is an API management tool providing robust security, seamless REST and SOAP conversion, and flexible deployment options for diverse cloud environments. It aids organizations in securing and monetizing their APIs while streamlining the development process.

IBM API Connect offers features like a security gateway, API lifecycle management, and integration with DataPower. Its intuitive interface enhances ease of use, supporting extensive analytics and traffic management. However, there are areas for improvement in automation, system integration, and user configuration. Organizations can deploy API Connect on-premises or in the cloud, delivering secure access control and analytics for banking, financial services, and government sectors. Compliance with standards like PSD2 ensures secure external API exposure and integration with multiple systems.

What are the most important features of IBM API Connect?

Security Gateway: Provides robust protection and data security for APIs.
Seamless Conversion: Facilitates easy conversion between REST and SOAP protocols.
API Management: Supports full API lifecycle management for efficient development.
DataPower Integration: Integrates seamlessly with DataPower for enhanced functionality.
Developer Portal: Offers a user-friendly interface for managing APIs and developers.
Analytics: Delivers powerful insights through comprehensive API analytics.
Flexible Deployment: Supports deployment on different cloud platforms for versatility.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from IBM API Connect?

Traffic Management: Efficiently manages high volumes of API traffic without compromising performance.
Data Protection: Ensures data is protected during API communication.
API Monetization: Facilitates API monetization strategies to drive revenue.
Scalability: Provides scalable solutions to handle growing demands seamlessly.

In specific industries like banking, financial services, and government sectors, IBM API Connect plays a crucial role in API management, orchestration, and regulation tasks. It provides secure access, control, and compliance with industry standards, serving as an essential gateway for data exchange and integration across multiple systems.

IBM

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

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM API Connect vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise

September 2025

Free Report: IBM API Connect vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise

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