Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

Kong and WSO2 are both solutions in the API Management category. Kong is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.7, while WSO2 is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Kong holds a 6.7% mindshare in APIM, compared to WSO2’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Kong users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of WSO2 users who would recommend it.

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 24 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

8,128 Views
6,310 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WSO2 API Manager

Read 41 WSO2 API Manager reviews

6,187 Views
4,467 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

WSO2 API Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Kong Gateway Enterprise and WSO2 API Manager are prominent competitors in API management. Kong Gateway Enterprise leads with scalability and integration, while WSO2 is favored for its open-source flexibility and rich documentation.

Features: Kong Gateway Enterprise offers features such as plugin architecture for enhanced scalability, role-based access control, and custom Lua scripting. WSO2 API Manager provides comprehensive API lifecycle management, an effective API store for testing and documentation, and robust integration features.

Room for Improvement: Kong Gateway Enterprise could improve in customization and pricing flexibility, live API tracing, and developer portal functionalities. WSO2 API Manager requires enhancements in user interface design, documentation, and technical support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kong Gateway Enterprise supports varied environments like hybrid, public, and private clouds, yet its technical support response time needs improvement. WSO2 API Manager's on-premises approach is noted for cloud integration, but it faces criticism for complex deployment procedures.

Pricing and ROI: Kong Gateway Enterprise is viewed as expensive compared to alternatives despite its features. The open-source edition provides economical options, but enterprise pricing is a concern. WSO2 API Manager is praised for cost-effectiveness, appealing to budget-conscious users. Both solutions promise ROI through reduced complexities and effective API management.

To learn more, read our detailed Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

April 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WSO2 API Manager

Ranking in API Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

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 WSO2 API Manager is 4.9%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

AmitKanodia

Cloud & Integration CoE Head at Capgemini

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.

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VishalSingh14

IT Engineer at Reliance Industries Ltd

Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration

I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

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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 excellent plugin support."

"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."

"I like everything about it. It provides the security we need."

"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 solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."

"Kong's most valuable features are its lightweight performance when handling millions of requests and the ability to write custom plugins to enhance security, such as end-to-end encryption, even in the open-source version."

"We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"WSO2 API Manager is a stable solution."

"Functionality-wise, I like WSO2 API Manager - Publisher API and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus."

"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."

"One of the great things about WSO2 API Manager is that it is so easy to adopt. And because it's an open source solution, we're able to extend the implementation any time to suit our company needs better."

"WSO2 API Manager is open-source, which offers a range of features not found in other open-source API tools."

"This solution is a little bit faster, easier to use, and has better integration than the other solutions I have experienced."

"The most interesting feature is its Mac-based function."

"The solution is open source and easy to configure."

More WSO2 API Manager pros

Cons

"The ease of billing is lost when Kong is not available directly on the Azure marketplace. This is one area where they can improve."

"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 needs to improve its pricing, which starts at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pricing should be based on API usage rather than monthly. It should improve its documentation as well."

"The tool needs improvement in UX."

"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."

"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."

"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 developer portal needs to be improved."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"From a product perspective, the first thing is that although the documentation provided by WSO2 is good, it could be much better. We're in the middle of a complex migration, moving away from VMs to Kubernetes with the latest version of WSO2 and good documentation is essential to us right now."

"I would like it to be a more stable solution. Maybe in the last version that is approved. For me it would be good if they had a community established version."

"Integration is an area that needs to be improved."

"From what I have experienced from the versions I have tried, they could improve on the multi-tenant environments to allow some kind of SSO single sign-on between tenant."

"We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing."

"The solution’s interface should be more user-friendly."

"I can say that user management is not really flexible. So, if I want to create 1,000 store users, I can't do it as a publisher. You have to register as a store user using the store URL."

"The technical support must be improved."

More WSO2 API Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is expensive."

"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."

"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."

"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

"We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."

"WSO2 API Manager is a low-cost solution. It is one of the most affordable solutions."

"I am using the free version."

"It is an open-source product."

"It is costly, around ten thousand per year, per instance"

"My previous company paid about 1.2 million dollars, and my current company pays about 300k. Both companies are at the enterprise level."

"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."

"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."

More WSO2 API Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?

It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?

We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing. It is uncertain whethe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?

We use WSO2 API Manager ( /products/wso2-api-manager-reviews ) to integrate our telecom products with third-party REST APIs. We are orchestrating services where our business process defines the int...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Kong Konnect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 7% of the time

IBM API Connect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 6% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Apigee vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 23% of the time

Apache APISIX vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 11% of the time

3scale API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More WSO2 API Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

April 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 API Manager

April 2025

Download WSO2 API Manager product report

Overview

Kong delivers a next generation API platform built for modern architectures. With a lightnight-fast, lightweight, and flexible core, Kong delivers sub-millisecond latency across all your services. Kong's is deployment-, vendor-, and pattern-agnostic, allowing you to run your services how you want, where you want, and with who you want - from baremetal to cloud, monolith to microservices, service mesh, and beyond.

Kong

WSO2 API Manager is a comprehensive platform that allows organizations to design, publish, and manage APIs.

It provides a centralized interface for API governance, security, and analytics.

With features like API monetization and developer portal, it enables businesses to drive innovation and create new revenue streams.

WSO2

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner

1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

April 2025

Free Report: Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

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