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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Postman 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
Postman
Ranking in API Management
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
API Monitoring Software (1st), API Testing Tools (2nd)
 

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 Postman is 0.8%, up from 0.4% 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.
Anagha Mahadik - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution simplifies web service testing with impressive speed and accessibility
It is very easy for me to use and I highly prefer it compared to SoapUI and other products for performing its job. It is more handy and faster. It has impacted us very nicely. Postman is used for free by us. I'm not sure if there might be a paid version for multiple users. It is a very good product used for development. It is easy to install, as well as to learn, particularly for new users, even if they are not developers. I taught my business analyst to use it. I just showed them once, and it was easy for them to understand. For example, I gave them the URL and request format and asked them to test independently. They were able to use it on their own and do their testing as well. It was a good experience, especially for generally smart people, like those we usually hire in our company. It is pretty easy to explain, and learning it is not complex.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The solution provides good performance."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"The scalability is good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Collections."
"The API testing features are valuable."
"I like that it is very easy to use. I also like the automation feature."
"Postman helps to write pre-request scripts and make a collection out of each request. You don’t have to spend time writing or copying the requests. The solution lets you integrate multiple environments and their features. Either the tool’s pro or premium version lets you do the merge and pull request for the Git directly."
"The most valuable feature is that JavaScript can be included as tests."
"The tool is simple and easy."
"It is stable and does not lag."
 

Cons

"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."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"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 are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"Postman does not have a check-in balance. Essentially what I mean by that is if there is something that is already configured on a particular device, it just overrides it without checking whether you really want to override it or not."
"The tool needs to have a reporting feature."
"Postman needs to improve its support for a lot of integrations."
"We'd like to see some better UI in newer versions."
"I live in Turkey, so for me, the value of dollar currency is high...Postman can change its pricing policy and decrease the prices for Turkey."
"Postman could be improved by providing options for performance testing of APIs."
"We cannot see transaction times in the product."
"If you have knowledge of JavaScript, the initial setup is easy and straightforward. If not, it may take some time to learn about JavaScript before starting the implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The licensing is expensive."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"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."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"Unlike APIs, the solution does not require a license."
"We use the open-source version. They introduced a new licensing model where your company must subscribe to their services if you're using it for business purposes. However, I think they charge too much if you're only using the basic features. It limits what your organization can do if you're not a paying customer."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"We do not pay any money for Postman."
"I rate the price of Postman a four out of five."
"We are using the free version that is available."
"The solution has a licensing fee which might be prohibitive."
"Its price is moderate as compared to other competitors. The version that we are using is not open source, so it is not free."
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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
22%
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing 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...
How does Postman compare with Apache JMeter?
Postman lets you easily define variables, which then get updated automatically. This is a huge time-saver and makes processes very efficient. We can also export the test cases we create and share t...
What do you like most about Postman?
The product is easy to implement.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Postman?
Postman is open-source, so the cost is minimal compared to commercial platforms.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
PayPal, Shopify, Microsoft, Adobe, Atlassian, Twitter, BestBuy, Coursera
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Postman and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.