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IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

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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

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration
Ranking in API Management
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (28th)
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
14th
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 November 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Pak for Integration is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 3.4%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise3.4%
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration1.1%
Other95.5%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Igor Khalitov - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Full Stack Software Engineer at Maraphonic, Inc.
Manages APIs and integrates microservices with redirection feature
IBM Cloud Pak for Integration includes monitoring capabilities to track the performance and health of your integrations. You can quickly roll back to a previous version if an issue arises. Additionally, it supports incremental deployments, allowing you to shift traffic to a new version of an API gradually. For example, you can start by directing 10% of traffic to the new version while the rest continue using the legacy version. If everything works as expected, you can gradually increase the traffic to the new version over time. IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has a client base that includes numerous organizations using AI and machine learning technologies. We leverage an open-source machine learning framework and integrate it with Kafka to help create and manage various products and data retrieval processes. For companies with private data, the framework first retrieves relevant data from a GitHub database, which is then combined with the final request before being sent to a language model like GPT. This ensures that the language model uses your specific data to generate responses. Kafka plays a key role by streaming real-time data from file systems and databases like Oracle and Microsoft SQL. This data is published to Kafka topics, then vectorized and used with artificial intelligence to enhance the overall process. It's like an old-fashioned approach. The best way is to redesign it with products such as Kafka. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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 most valuable aspect of the Cloud Pak, in general, is the flexibility that you have to use the product."
"Cloud Pak for Integration is definitely scalable. That is the most important criteria."
"It is a stable solution."
"In general, the solution works very, very well."
"The most preferable aspect would be the elimination of the command, which was a significant improvement. In the past, it was a challenge, but now we can proceed smoothly with the implementation of our policies and everything is managed through JCP. It's still among the positive aspects, and it's a valuable feature."
"Redirection is a key feature. It helps in managing multiple microservices by centralizing control and access."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"The clients that we have already deployed are happy with it."
"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."
"The price is reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The features I like include ease of operation and implementation in a cloud environment, the dashboarding features for API statistics, and the user-friendly developer portal."
"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
 

Cons

"What needs to be improved is the restriction that they have on the product."
"Setting up Cloud Pak for Integration is relatively complex. It's not as easy because it has not yet been fully integrated. You still have some products that are still not containerized, so you still have to run them on a dedicated VM."
"The pricing can be improved."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"Its queuing and messaging features need improvement."
"Enterprise bots are needed to balance products like Kafka and Confluent."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing model is very flexible."
"It is an expensive solution."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"The licensing is expensive."
"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."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software 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

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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 ...
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

CVS Health Corporation
Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Pak for Integration vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.