Kong Gateway Enterprise vs SwaggerHub comparison

Kong and SmartBear are both solutions in the API Management category. Kong is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.7, while SmartBear is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5. Kong holds a 7.2% mindshare in APIM, compared to SmartBear’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Kong users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of SmartBear users who would recommend it.

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 25 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

7,416 Views
7,416 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SwaggerHub

Read 10 SwaggerHub reviews

1,551 Views
1,551 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

SwaggerHub

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

SwaggerHub and Kong Gateway Enterprise are both leading API management solutions competing in the API lifecycle space. While SwaggerHub shines with its competitive pricing and focus on API design, Kong Gateway Enterprise holds the upper hand in API management and performance capabilities.

Features: SwaggerHub offers robust API design and documentation tools, integration capabilities, and versioning, fostering collaboration among teams. Kong Gateway Enterprise excels in traffic control, security, and scalability, catering to enterprises with complex API needs. It also provides plugin support and role-based access control for extensive API governance.

Room for Improvement: SwaggerHub could enhance its API management capabilities to compete more effectively with high-demand environments. It might also benefit from offering more advanced security features. Kong Gateway Enterprise could improve in terms of user-friendliness, especially for those without deep technical expertise. Reducing its complexity in deployment and enhancing ease of integration for smaller teams would be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SwaggerHub is straightforward and user-friendly, focusing on accessibility for designers and developers, with solid support infrastructure ensuring seamless deployment. Kong Gateway Enterprise, while powerful, requires more technical expertise for deployment. However, it mitigates this with comprehensive customer support and resources to handle detailed configurations.

Pricing and ROI: SwaggerHub stands out for its competitive initial setup costs and flexible pricing models, offering high ROI for teams focused on API design and collaboration. Kong Gateway Enterprise, although with higher upfront costs, provides substantial ROI through long-term value in managing demanding API environments, addressing the needs of enterprises seeking comprehensive solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. SwaggerHub

July 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

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SwaggerHub

Ranking in API Management

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

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 SwaggerHub is 1.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

Read full review

SwaminathanSubramanian

Director/Enterprise Solutions Architect, Technology Advisor at Kyndryl

Facilitating enterprise-wide API governance and management

Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account. The scalability also needs enhancement, as it becomes flaky under increased load. Additionally, the versioning management could be improved to be on par with source code management tools.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."

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

"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."

"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."

"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 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 companies and must ensure they adhere to their allocated usage limits. Without rate limiting, there's a risk of excessive usage, which could result in significant costs."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."

"One of the best features of SwaggerHub is how it allows me to create APIs and control the evolution of APIs within an organization."

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable features are the collaboration between multiple teams and the control and distribution of specifications."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy and not at all difficult."

"The tool's most valuable feature is licensing."

"The scalability is endless."

"It is quite a useful tool. It is quite good with the validation of the spec. It works quite well in terms of errors and conformity to the OpenAPI standard. It is better than Visual Studio Code in terms of editing."

More SwaggerHub pros

Cons

"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."

"The developer portal needs to be improved."

"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."

"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."

"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."

"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."

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

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"It could be more intuitive compared to one of its competitors."

"It has limited functionality...Unfortunately, some of its features are not what we need."

"We have to use additional tools to test APIs."

"The review process should be improved. There seem to be some gaps, at least for us, for the editing part because we would like to have a full request review mechanism. They support some comments, but it is really hard to manage those comments. We would like to use the full request. Therefore, we are now looking to integrate with repositories. It has integration with Bitbucket and GitHub, but we have some internal constraints, and we need to move some of the repositories to GitHub. Our source code is on-premise in Bitbucket, and it was a bit of a problem for us to integrate. Now we are transitioning our repositories to GitHub, and hopefully, we can enable the integration. This will probably solve the problem with the review and approval. Its customization should also be improved. There are limitations around the support for the developer portal. There should be more customization options for the website that you can use as a developer portal. Currently, it has only Swagger UI with minimal customization. You cannot actually add additional pages and documentation for explaining concepts and general things. That's why we have started to look around to see what other tools are doing. They should also allow tagging on the API. We would like to add some tagging on the API to reflect certain things. Currently, any metadata that you would like to have has to be a part of the spec. You cannot do anything else. It should also have support for Open API 3.1, which was released at the beginning of the year. It would be great to be able to switch to that."

"SwaggerHub's UI needs to be improved as it looks very old school."

"More integration and usability with the cloud microservices would be nice"

"The scalability aspect of SwaggerHub can be improved. It becomes a bit unreliable when the load is increased and isn't up to par with expectations for scalability."

"Some areas of SwaggerHub that could be improved include the interface between the code editor and the visual editor, the integration with private APIs, which currently requires an upgraded account."

More SwaggerHub cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

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

"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."

"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."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

"It has a yearly subscription, but I am not sure."

"The tool is cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Retailer

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about SwaggerHub?

The tool's most valuable feature is licensing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SwaggerHub?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SwaggerHub?

I started using SwaggerHub in its previous version, SmartMiner, with a tool called SoapUI. I used it to create mock web services to test web services and create test scripts and mock APIs. This usa...

See all answers

Comparisons

WSO2 API Manager vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 13% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Kong Konnect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

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Microsoft Azure API Management vs SwaggerHub

Compared 24% of the time

Apigee vs SwaggerHub

Compared 18% of the time

MuleSoft API Manager vs SwaggerHub

Compared 9% of the time

Postman Enterprise vs SwaggerHub

Compared 8% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs SwaggerHub

Compared 4% of the time

More SwaggerHub Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

July 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

API Management

July 2025

Download SwaggerHub 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

SwaggerHub is an integrated API Development platform, built for teams, that brings the core capabilities of the Swagger framework to design, build, document and deploy APIs. SwaggerHub enables development teams to collaborate and coordinate the entire lifecycle of an API with the flexibility to integrate with the toolset of your choice.

SmartBear

Sample Customers

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

Sonic, Zuora, Woolworths, CrowdFlower

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. SwaggerHub

July 2025

Free Report: Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. SwaggerHub

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

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