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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Tyk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tyk
Ranking in API Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.2%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tyk is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

ASHOK YADAV - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions but lacks software upgrades
Upgrading Kong Gateway Enterprise should be more sophisticated and innovative. The main issue is with the update process. Our DevOps and admin teams need to update multiple files, which is cumbersome. For instance, in cases where Palantir countries are involved, they have to update many files, which is not ideal. However, for other tasks like configuring the message routing and services and handling all the configurations, the process is acceptable. The software version upgrade process should be improved. Additionally, the DevOps portal should be integrated more natively. There are a few other areas for improvement, such as implementing automatic load balancing. The status of the office team, whether it is up or down, should be checked at the API gateway level to facilitate load balancing.
MarkDoherty - PeerSpot reviewer
Fastest to get up and running and fewer idiosyncrasies than competitors
In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly better communication with the customer base that would be my main issue with them. But as a product, it's very difficult to find any major faults.

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 the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"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 most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"It is a good product for API management."
"You can set up workflows and write limited pieces of logic."
"The most valuable feature is the load balancing with the circuit-breaker function."
"The scalability is very good. That was a key factor in the selection, like how it could be pushed to high volume and scalability, which seemed to be very good."
"The feature I find most valuable is that this solution allows us to manage our security."
"The portal for developers that this solution provides has great functionality."
 

Cons

"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."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"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 OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"There should be an easier way to integrate with other solutions, even though it's the same API solution layer. Comparability will be a good improvement."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"The ease of billing is lost when Kong is not available directly on the Azure marketplace. This is one area where they can improve."
"We would like a better tool for generating documentation for the APIs to be developed."
"Sometimes when new features are released, they are not immediately stable."
"In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly better communication with the customer base that would be my main issue with them."
"It is a young product and does not have the kind of brand recognition that would make it a more popular solution with our clients."
"I would like to see some additional features like having some extensions for .NET core because we use it for our back-end language."
"We ran it for a while, but then we decided to move away from Tyk, because Tyk's cloud version, the SaaS version, has a significant limitation of limited flexibility, so you can't program very much."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The licensing is expensive."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"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."
"There are different versions and plans available depending on the requirements, so there is flexibility in terms of the pricing."
"We are using the open-source version of this product, so there are no licensing costs for its use."
"The cost curve is far smoother, both in terms of volume and the number of calls it's running on, compared to most competitors. So it's a tad more expensive at the very low end, but the curve is nothing like Apigee or some of the others."
"The price is low compared to other products of a similar type."
"It had a free version, which suited many of our needs, but not all, but we were happy to go ahead with the licensed version as well, which is the paid version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 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?
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 ...
What do you like most about Tyk?
The scalability is very good. That was a key factor in the selection, like how it could be pushed to high volume and scalability, which seemed to be very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tyk?
The pricing is actually quite competitive. In Azure environments, it gets beaten by Microsoft API Gateway, but on the other hand, it offers some features that Microsoft lacks. So it really comes do...
What needs improvement with Tyk?
In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Trip Advisor, Juniper Networks, AT&T
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Tyk and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.