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Fast, Lightweight API Gateway with Strong Plugins and Kubernetes Integration
What do you like best about the product?
Kong is fast, lightweight and predictable under load. The plugin model gives you tight control over routing, auth, and rate‑limits without building custom components. Declarative config fits cleanly into CI/CD, and the Kubernetes integration is solid.
From a cost point of view, the open‑source core gives you most of what you need without locking you into a heavy enterprise contract. The ROI is straightforward: once it’s in place, you spend less time maintaining API plumbing and more time on actual product work.
Support has been steady when we’ve needed it, and onboarding new services is simple once the patterns are in place. The newer AI‑driven insights in Konnect are early but useful — mainly around traffic patterns and anomaly detection — and they help tighten operational visibility without extra tooling.
From a cost point of view, the open‑source core gives you most of what you need without locking you into a heavy enterprise contract. The ROI is straightforward: once it’s in place, you spend less time maintaining API plumbing and more time on actual product work.
Support has been steady when we’ve needed it, and onboarding new services is simple once the patterns are in place. The newer AI‑driven insights in Konnect are early but useful — mainly around traffic patterns and anomaly detection — and they help tighten operational visibility without extra tooling.
What do you dislike about the product?
The UI is limited, so most work ends up in config and CLI. Some plugins are harder to tune than they should be, and debugging interactions between them takes time. Enterprise features are useful but push you into higher pricing tiers earlier than expected.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong gives us a consistent way to manage routing, auth, and rate‑limits across distributed services. It standardises API governance, removes one‑off patterns, and keeps traffic policies in one place. The declarative approach speeds up onboarding for new services and reduces the time spent maintaining API plumbing. Overall, it improves reliability and keeps day‑to‑day operations predictable.
Flexible Deployment, Easy to Use, and Smart Management/Data Plane Separation
What do you like best about the product?
Deployment flexibility, easy to use, separates management and data planes
What do you dislike about the product?
Plugin sprawl becomes a governance problem, Order of execution matters, but isn’t always obvious
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
API gateway, edge and micro-gateway
Flexible API Management with a Steep Learning Curve
What do you like best about the product?
I really appreciate Kong Gateway's plugin-based architecture and flexibility. It allows us to centralize security and traffic management while keeping services simple, which scales well in cloud-native environments. The architecture helps us to centralize cross-cutting concerns like authentication, rate limiting, and observability, significantly reducing duplication and keeping services focused on business logic. From a platform perspective, it improves consistency and makes it easier to enforce policies across all APIs without touching individual services. Its flexibility also helps us respond quickly to changing requirements by updating configurations at the gateway level instead of redeploying services, leading to better scalability, faster iteration, and a more maintainable system overall.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find the learning curve can be steep, especially for teams new to API gateways. Configuration complexity increases as the number of services grows. Debugging issues across plugins and routing rules can sometimes be non-trivial. The initial setup had a steep learning curve due to the Lua-based architecture and our plugins were in Go language, which was not supported out of the box.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Kong Gateway to centralize API management, improve scalability, and maintain consistency. Its plugin-based architecture helps focus services on business logic, while flexibility enables quick adaptation to changes, enhancing scalability, iteration speed, and system maintainability.
Lightweight Yet Powerful
What do you like best about the product?
Lightweight but powerful, deploy anywhere
What do you dislike about the product?
control plane groups, lua based plugins, lua is dead
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Federated gateways, dev teams being self sufficient in managing their APIs
Kong’s Built-In API Key Management Makes Zero Trust Easy
What do you like best about the product?
Kong has built-in API key management and can implement Zero Trust.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some requires extensive time to setup/configuration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Maybe some observability on how traffic flows?
Intuitive API Management with Seamless Security
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how with Kong Gateway, we can easily apply security for our APIs, which makes it very user-friendly. I like the interface of Kong Gateway for users because it's clear, and even a user who is new to Kong Gateway can easily use it. It's also nice that we can easily set it up with the help of the helpline.
What do you dislike about the product?
The trial period is too short; I'd like it to be extended beyond 45 days.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong Gateway helps us easily apply security for our APIs and has a clear, user-friendly interface.
Flexible Deployment, Smooth Setup
What do you like best about the product?
I really like Kong Gateway's deployment flexibility. It can be deployed in various environments, whether on-premise, off-premise, or in the cloud. It's also appreciated how easy it is to configure services, routes, plugins, and consumers, making the whole setup process smooth and easy. Additionally, the gateway support team is very helpful, providing great assistance.
What do you dislike about the product?
I think Kong Gateway could use some improvements in compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA depending on the environment. It needs to be more compliant in those aspects.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Kong Gateway for API management, microservices, and securing and routing requests.
Phenomenal Speed and GitOps-Friendly Routing with Kong Ingress Controller
What do you like best about the product?
The speed is phenomenal, but the real game-changer is how the Kong Ingress Controller allows us to automate our entire routing configuration through kubernetes native resources and GitOps best practices. Using the OIDC and Rate Limiting plugins saved us weeks of custom development, instantly securing our services with zero performance hit.
What do you dislike about the product?
The shift away from a fully supported Open Source (OSS) model is disappointing, as it forces teams to move toward the Enterprise/Konnect licensing much earlier than expected to maintain security and stability. This transition adds significant overhead for smaller projects and complicates our long-term roadmap when balancing cost against the need for basic production-grade features.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Before Kong, we were bogged down manually coding cross-cutting concerns like OAuth2 and rate limiting for every new service, but now we offload all that complexity to the gateway. This "kickstart" approach has slashed our initial development time by weeks and ensures our entire API ecosystem has a consistent, high-quality security posture from day one.
Easy Onboarding, Tricky Setup with Powerful UI
What do you like best about the product?
I use Kong Gateway for load balancing and find that it handles preflight checks and acts as an auth wrapper using simple modules really well. I appreciate its best UI for routing, which makes things straightforward. What I like the most about Kong Gateway is how easy it is to onboard and use the UI, making the overall experience smooth and enjoyable.
What do you dislike about the product?
The system setup part could be improved. It can be tricky, and having a feature like Helm to set it up instantly would be beneficial.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Kong Gateway for load balancing, handling preflight checks, using auth wrappers with simple modules, and routing efficiently with the best UI.
Kong: A Powerful Open-Source API Gateway for Managing APIs Across Any Environment
What do you like best about the product?
One of the Popular opensource API Gateways which help us to manage APIs deployed anywhere from a simple infra to complex multi cloud environment.
As per my obeservation Kong is capable to handle different protocols like REST, GRPC, Graphql which enables us to manage almost all of our APIs needs.
As per my obeservation Kong is capable to handle different protocols like REST, GRPC, Graphql which enables us to manage almost all of our APIs needs.
What do you dislike about the product?
Need improvement on AI features and plugins in Kong Gateway is limited, impacting overall functionality and performance.
There is lack of analytics and monitoring in Kong Gateway, hindering effective performance tracking.
There is lack of analytics and monitoring in Kong Gateway, hindering effective performance tracking.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
While using other backend APIs, we ended up in applying many of the below architecture characteristics to every individual APIs to support the general requirements. That will be a lot of work.
Authentication/Authorization, Monitoring, Logging, Traffic control, Caching, API Administration etc..
While using Kong Gateway it will take away all these cross-cutting concerns in managing these APIs and put them all across in a single plane. This will provide us with a lot of architecture advantages.
Authentication/Authorization, Monitoring, Logging, Traffic control, Caching, API Administration etc..
While using Kong Gateway it will take away all these cross-cutting concerns in managing these APIs and put them all across in a single plane. This will provide us with a lot of architecture advantages.
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