Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Kong Konnect comparison

Kong Gateway Enterprise and Kong Konnect are both solutions in the API Management category. Kong Gateway Enterprise is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.9, while Kong Konnect is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.5. Kong Gateway Enterprise holds a 7.1% mindshare in APIM, compared to Kong Konnect’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Kong Gateway Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Kong Konnect users who would recommend it.

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 25 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

6,455 Views
6,455 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Kong Konnect

Read 3 Kong Konnect reviews

550 Views
550 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Kong Konnect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kong Gateway Enterprise and Kong Konnect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two API Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Kong Konnect Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Kong Konnect

September 2025

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Helped 872,706 peers since 2012

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

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Kong Konnect

Ranking in API Management

25th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

3.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.1%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Konnect is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise	7.1%
Kong Konnect	1.0%
Other	91.9%

API Management

Featured Reviews

ASHOK YADAV

Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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ShubhojitDasgupta

API Technical Architect at Independent API Consultant

Have worked across industries to streamline API lifecycle and integration with strong support experience

When comparing documentation, Kong's documentation is not on par with Google, Amazon, or other cloud providers. If a new person joins a team and wants to start using Kong's product and their associated tools, they would find it difficult initially compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft products, or even Azure from the deployment perspective. Kong has been working on their documentation and has developed a separate portal for the documentation. They are trying to improve that area.

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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 significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."

"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."

"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."

"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."

"The solution provides good performance."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."

"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."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"Their tech support is excellent; when I raise an incident or a support ticket, it gets answered in four hours."

"Technical support from Proofpoint was absolutely excellent."

"The documentation is excellent, and it includes a developer portal, which helps create a common distribution channel for APIs within and outside the enterprise."

Cons

"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."

"The developer portal needs to be improved."

"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."

"They could focus more on pricing."

"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 software version upgrade process should be improved."

"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"Pricing was the issue as it becomes very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances."

"Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams."

"When comparing documentation, Kong's documentation is not on par with Google, Amazon, or other cloud providers."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The licensing is expensive."

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

"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."

"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."

"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	19

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 ...

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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?

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 ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kong Konnect?

The pricing deserves a high rating for consideration. Cost was the reason we stopped using it. Pricing was the issue as it becomes very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kong Konnect?

Pricing might be a topic to consider regarding improvements. I may advise Proofpoint to adjust marketing solutions based on each country itself.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Kong Konnect?

The clients mainly were using Proofpoint for email security, which is the primary use case. We have used Proofpoint for email security.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

IBM API Connect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Axway AMPLIFY API Management vs Kong Konnect

Compared 7% of the time

SwaggerHub vs Kong Konnect

Compared 5% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs Kong Konnect

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

October 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

API Management

October 2025

Download Kong Konnect 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

Kong Konnect facilitates efficient management and integration of APIs, providing a streamlined experience for developers to manage their services with high scalability.

Kong Konnect is a comprehensive platform tailored for API development and management. It offers an intuitive interface that simplifies the process of connecting, managing, and securing APIs. Organizations benefit from its scalable architecture, ensuring it meets diverse operational demands and optimizes service delivery, supporting a robust API ecosystem that aligns with modern development practices.

What are the key features of Kong Konnect?

API Gateway: Efficiently handles routing, transformations, and more for effective API management.
Security Management: Includes authentication and traffic control to protect data.
Analytics and Monitoring: Provides insights into API usage and performance metrics.
Developer Portals: Offers customizable portals for developer engagement and onboarding.
Plugin Architecture: Extends functionality through a rich library of plugins.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces operational costs through streamlined API processes.
Scalability: Easily adapts to increased API traffic without performance losses.
Improved Security: Enhances data protection through advanced security features.
Enhanced Developer Productivity: Accelerates development timelines with easy-to-use tools.
Better User Engagement: Improves collaboration through robust developer support.

In tech industries, Kong Konnect is often implemented to advance cloud-native applications by enhancing API connectivity and security. Financial services utilize it to ensure compliance and secure data sharing. Telecommunications deploy it to handle high data throughput efficiently.

Kong

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Kong Konnect

September 2025

Free Report: Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Kong Konnect

Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Kong Konnect and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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