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IBM API Connect vs Kong Konnect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM API Connect
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (8th)
Kong Konnect
Ranking in API Management
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM API Connect is 6.4%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Konnect is 0.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shanmugasundaram Shanmuganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
SA
Significant email security benefits combined with efficient spam filtering, yet cost hinders long-term use
The integration with our on-prem Exchange was very straightforward; the only thing we did was redirect all email traffic over Proofpoint, so Proofpoint did everything independently, and we were very happy. I am still receiving emails from Proofpoint's site. Not using it at the moment, but in the short term we will be tackling that portion of the product as well. We cannot provide feedback regarding Dynamics because we are not experienced enough at the moment; we have initiatives going on but did not get enough feedback from end users. Based on my overall experience with Proofpoint, considering the cost perspective, I would rate it a 7 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The capabilities are very good."
"This solution is ready to scale and already supports our agile CICD."
"Publishers can easily identify, create, and publish APIs on the developer portal, defining plans, packages, and potentially billing rules."
"Security is well organized and managed within the solution."
"The interface is very nice. It makes the solution easy to use and navigate."
"The centralized management: this provides a management module that can deploy and apply security policies to all APIs, including all the gateways that are deployed on-premises and on any cloud because the gateway component can run at a VMware or in a Kubernetes cluster."
"One of the most valuable features is that we can seamlessly and harmoniously expose our capabilities, from a security point of view."
"The most valuable feature is the security we get from this solution. I know of a bank that uses it to ensure that everything is secure. The second feature I like is the retail environment, where we actually want to be able to provide as many suppliers and consumers with APIs as possible. If you are well-trained in the writing of RESTful API's, you can actually publish an API in a matter of minutes, test it, and publish it."
"The documentation is excellent, and it includes a developer portal, which helps create a common distribution channel for APIs within and outside the enterprise."
"Technical support from Proofpoint was absolutely excellent."
 

Cons

"The initial setup and installation could be easier."
"IBM info-center help documentation also needs improvement. Competitive product like Apigee provide out of the box policies to run Javascript, JAVA and better/flexible logging policies."
"It needs to be less taxing on compute resources."
"Debugging could be improved."
"The administration of the user interface and the technical documentation are areas of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"In the next version, I don't know if they've already been included it or not, but the designer and all the tools should be on the cloud. I don't want any external installation or local installation."
"The documentation needs to be a bit better."
"The installation was difficult with the IBM toolkit."
"Pricing was the issue as it becomes very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances."
"Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten."
"API Connect was highly expensive for us, but the decision to switch was made before I joined the company. It seems like the company bought it, but they didn't know how to use it. After two years, they decided to reevaluate and conduct some cost estimates."
"It is an expensive solution. The licensing model is based on a per-subscription and per-subscriber end-user basis, meaning the price is determined by the end-users of the platform."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The price of the solution is expensive. However, there are a lot of customization capabilities."
"Pricing for IBM API Connect varies, e.g. it could be subscription-based. Deploying it on private cloud also means you have to own most of the software licensing."
"I haven't seen anyone go from on-premise to the cloud. In fact, I am seeing people go from the cloud to on-premise because the costs can quickly grow on the cloud."
"API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Insurance Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
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.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kong Konnect?
While the pricing model isn't very clear on how usage is tracked, the initial cost and setup for using Kong Konnect are reasonable.
What needs improvement with Kong Konnect?
Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams. Additionally, the licensing model could be simplified, especiall...
What is your primary use case for Kong Konnect?
I use Kong Konnect ( /products/kong-konnect-reviews ) as an API Gateway or API management solution. I have several use cases, including securing internal APIs within Siemens network by deploying Ko...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heineken, Tine, Finologee, Axis Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM API Connect vs. Kong Konnect and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.