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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Layer7 API Management 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

Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Layer7 API Management
Ranking in API Management
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.7%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Layer7 API Management is 2.9%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

AmitKanodia - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides role-based access control and can be easily customized with Lua script
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.
Ronald D'Souza - PeerSpot reviewer
Has great drag-and-drop features and it requires minimal coding
I have mainly implemented using Layer 7 API Management. Some of the major challenges we were able to meet with a quick release to market methodology. Some of the tasks which we achieved for our customers were: 1. Translation service from SOAP to REST and vice versa. 2. API service to DB (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, Snowflake, SAP HANA) -- Created Swagger APIs that were able to perform CRUD operation to the backend API mentioned above and provided routes to query and get data. 3. Integration with Payment gateway service providers to perform (transaction on behalf of the customer with third-party payment gateway service providers white labeled with our APIs ) -- Followed TMF standards for payment gateway integration with the Telcom world. 4. Orchestration of the API. Build multiple microservers and provided orchestration based on route, path, and data in the request and perform actions that would be communicated with multiple APIs and provide a single consolidated response. 5. Provided API-driven security (Oauth 2.0, JWT, SAML, Basic, and a variety of means) to access the API giving the developer the freedom to concentrate only on application/service/microservice and let the gateway handle the threat. 6. Seamless Mutual Authentication allowed good segregation between APIs in the DMZ and internal network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"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."
"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"In terms of stability, the tool's team has made some good efforts, and my company is very happy with the product's approach."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."
"The scalability has been good. We haven't had to scale up a whole lot, even with all the extra transactions we're running through it. We're in the area of about 2 and 1/2 million OAuth tokens issued per hour, and it's performing fine with that."
"It is fairly stable for the Gateway side."
"We are able to go to market very quickly and deploy our functionalities very quickly."
"The latest version that just came out at the first of October really was a powerful move in the right direction. I was very, very pleased with that because it allows now beginning to use information of things. We've got this IOT infrastructure that we can plug into, and for my use cases there are a lot of outdoor sensors that provide valuable information to my customers."
"There are many security policies within this solution that help to prevent attacks. We are also able to implement TLS to allow us to look at the application from the backend. There are workflows inside of the gate that help us a lot to implement customers and improve user experience. Our customers are also able to move from a customized creative view to taking advantage of AI bot solutions."
"The product documentation helps the client and/or user to evolve quickly while using the tool."
"Every API that we get from external or from internal goes through this layer first, and it should not be a bottleneck. That was the problem we had before. Now it's no longer a bottleneck. It's more like a throughput, this process is less than 10 milliseconds for any particular API."
"The solution fills our two most important concerns in seeking an API solution by providing a reliable gateway and security options."
 

Cons

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"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."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"I would like to be able to see the publisher role be able to be organized within organizations, so somebody within that role can only manipulate their particular policies."
"We are looking for improvements related to integration. We want to see them add integration tools to the CA bundle. That would be helpful."
"Layer7 API Management could have a live API creator feature, so my team can easily create APIs. Right now, the product doesn't have that feature."
"Layer7 API Management’s price could be reduced."
"CA double up portal is a pain. It is something that we are struggling with right now."
"They should incorporate deeper monitoring features into the solution to make the offering more complete. Doing so would help to showcase traffic patterns and usage to better engage customers and partners proactively. It would also help with API management and capacity planning."
"The entire lifecycle management approach needs improvement: from the API management, development, deployment, some of the settings around the quotas, and some security policy applications, etc. for the APIs. We found the Apigee platform a lot more robust in that area."
"Some users say that the API lacks some features and is lagging behind the competition although that has not been my personal experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is expensive."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"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."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"I feel that it is costly for medium-sized companies."
"There are various licensing models for Layer7 API Management. We have to buy additional licenses to get new versions."
"There are some costs for maintenance that we are charged, but that seems fair because we get the support."
"I think it's competitive. It's not that expensive when you compare CA with the Oracle product."
"We weren't comfortable with the pricing of licensing. It was slightly more expensive than its competitors."
"It is a pricey product, although not extremely overpriced compared to competitors in the market."
"Keep in mind the non-product licensing, e.g., if you opt not to use the embedded SQL."
"Licenses are required to operate the product, but I don't know much about the validity periods attached to it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 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...
What needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?
The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful. We use an open-source tool called Konga for basic dashboard needs, but it lacks support. It would be bette...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Layer7 API Management?
Pricing is more than average. While I am used to Layer7 API Management ( /products/layer7-api-management-reviews ), seeing other products makes the tool's pricing seem high.
What needs improvement with Layer7 API Management?
Broadcom's push for upgrades from version nine to ten, ten to 10.3, and onwards to twelve needs improvement in migration processes, especially with service dependencies. The migration path sometime...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA API Management, CA Live API Creator, Espresso Logic, CA API Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
1. IBM  2. Microsoft  3. Oracle  4. Salesforce  5. SAP  6. Cisco  7. Dell  8. HP  9. Adobe  10. VMware  11. Accenture  12. Capgemini  13. Deloitte  14. PwC  15. Ernst & Young  16. Infosys  17. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services)  18. Wipro  19. Cognizant  20. HCL Technologies  21. Tech Mahindra  22. Fujitsu  23. Hitachi  24. NEC  25. NTT Data  26. Ericsson  27. Nokia  28. Siemens  29. AT&T  30. Verizon  31. Vodafone  32. Orange
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Layer7 API Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.