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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs OpenLegacy 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
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenLegacy
Ranking in API Management
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (78th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 3.9%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenLegacy is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise3.9%
OpenLegacy1.4%
Other94.7%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1042905 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Chief Enterprise Integration Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The biggest advantage is how simple the technology was.
I'd like to see OpenLegacy develop its low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions. They've expanded somewhat their horizons for integration beyond mainframe CICS, which is their sweet spot. They have some tooling in that area, but it's not as good as it needs to be. OpenLegacy handles the bread-and-butter TP monitoring stuff, but I am working for one of the six banks in the United States still using the Hogan mainframe, which has a slightly proprietary mechanism. But OpenLegacy currently doesn't have a connector for Hogan. So it would help if they could build one. That would appeal to financial institutions that still use Hogan, like US Bank, Wells Fargo, KeyBank, and Vanguard.

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 feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."
"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."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"It is possible to solve larger legacy API issues on an enterprise level with this product."
"The biggest advantage of OpenLegacy was how simple the technology was, and we were able to build out the OpenLegacy parts very quickly, putting together a couple hundred APIs in six months."
"OpenLegacy produces a war file which includes everything you need to deploy a Tomcat server."
"Using mainframe programs (not screens), the OpenLegacy services do not require any changes by the mainframe programmers, thus reducing development cycles."
"The speed of development of production, especially in specific environments like IBM mainframes, has been valuable."
"Using OpenLegacy, the exposure of services is far easier and quicker. In many cases, exposure of services requires just a few clicks and takes only minutes. In very complex cases, it still only takes half a day. Without OpenLegacy, it would take us several months to create the same services."
"The product has helped our business by allowing us to become more efficient in data handling."
"It is possible to connect a service to a mainframe program or back transaction in a matter of minutes or hours at the most."
 

Cons

"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"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."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"The technical support team's response time needs to be improved."
"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."
"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"I'd like to see OpenLegacy develop its low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions. They've expanded somewhat their horizons for integration beyond mainframe CICS, which is their sweet spot. They have some tooling in that area, but it's not as good as it needs to be."
"We would also be more than happy if the product had the option to work in the opposite direction – the ability to consume REST/SOW services in the outer world from the mainframe."
"Customer support for the product is slow and not very good. It makes using the product difficult if you need help quickly."
"I would like to see SSL out-of-the-box. OpenLegacy certainly does SSL, but it was not the default for our use case. We are currently working with OpenLegacy to cross the SSL bridge and suspect that most users will want to do the same."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible and allow for once-off payment versus annual licensing. This would be more appealing to companies in Latin America."
"Debugging and logging for programmers could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible and allow for once-off payment versus annual licensing. This would be more appealing to companies in Latin America."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Construction Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise20
No data available
 

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 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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Many of openLegacy's global customers are among the Global 100 companies. Review case studies in these industries: Agriculture, Airport Authority, Automotive, Auto, Finance, Insurance, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retailwww.openlegacy.com/case-studie...
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. OpenLegacy and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.