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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Traefik Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Traefik Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.3%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Traefik Enterprise is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise7.3%
Traefik Enterprise1.2%
Other91.5%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sudhanshu Dev - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom plugin capability with enhanced high traffic handling and lightweight performance
We use Kong for our API gateway, handling all public traffic. It is an open-source tool, and even though we are a startup, it provides us with stability without incurring high costs initially Kong has helped us by performing smoothly even when we receive millions of requests, which prevents any…
Anurag Bandyopadhyay - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a good dashboard that provides a great overview to users
I would say that maybe along the same path that Traefik Enterprise is currently on, you have most of the things straight up in the UI that you can check even with minimal training. You can just use, understand, and debug things from the UI. There is still work to be done in the tool, which can ensure that anyone with just minimal know-how of the product doesn't have to really go into the terminal and see the status of routes, concierge routes, or whether certain things are up or not. One should be able to just check things straight up from the UI and get to know what kind of issues are there in the solution, and even though such a feature is already there in the tool, there is more work to be done in it. I would not particularly recommend any improvements when it comes to the security of traffic. I think the tool is pretty pluggable in terms of whatever security we want to put in our routes, even though it is just as a middleware or just as a supporting product for whatever we have in our services.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"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 most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."
"The tool handles scalability pretty easily. Adding more instances of services and all are pretty intuitive to do using Traefik Enterprise."
 

Cons

"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."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"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."
"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"One should be able to just check things straight up from the UI and get to know what kind of issues are there in the solution, and even though such a feature is already there in the tool, there is more work to be done in it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"The licensing is expensive."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"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."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"I would say that Traefik Enterprise is cheaper than the other alternatives in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise19
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Traefik Enterprise?
One of the reasons why my company moved from Envoy, as well as the other in-house options, to Traefik Enterprise was because doing many things in-house was overkill. Traefik Enterprise was a relati...
What needs improvement with Traefik Enterprise?
I would say that maybe along the same path that Traefik Enterprise is currently on, you have most of the things straight up in the UI that you can check even with minimal training. You can just use...
What is your primary use case for Traefik Enterprise?
At Razorpay, the tool is used as a reverse proxy, ingress controller, and CRD management. A year and a half ago, my company started to move from Traefik Enterprise v1.0 to Traefik Enterprise v2.0. ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and others in API Management. Updated: August 2025.
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