3scale API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

Red Hat and Kong are both solutions in the API Management category. Red Hat is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.8, while Kong is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.6. Red Hat holds a 2.2% mindshare in APIM, compared to Kong’s 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Kong users who would recommend it.

3scale API Management

Read 11 3scale API Management reviews

3,388 Views
2,493 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 24 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

8,984 Views
6,904 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

3scale API Management

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

3scale API Management and Kong Gateway Enterprise compete in the API management space. Kong Gateway Enterprise has the upper hand with its feature-rich environment, despite its higher price point, while 3scale is recognized for ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

Features: 3scale API Management offers ease of deployment, strong integration with OpenShift, and reliable API gateway functionalities. It provides straightforward API management solutions. Kong Gateway Enterprise provides robust security, extensive API governance, and customization options with a robust plugin architecture for adapting to complex enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: 3scale requires enhancements in flexibility, customization especially in CMS and API management, and route limiting capabilities. Kong Gateway Enterprise could benefit from a refined pricing model, better developer portal, and enhanced integration for east-west communications. Improvements in the upgrade process and documentation are also needed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both products support deployment in various environments such as on-premises and cloud. 3scale's integration with OpenShift simplifies its deployment, though its support can be inconsistent. Kong Gateway Enterprise provides hybrid cloud options but is noted for complexities in usage, although user support is generally satisfactory.

Pricing and ROI: 3scale is cost-effective, particularly when integrated into OpenShift subscriptions, appealing to small and medium enterprises. It presents reasonable pricing with clear ROI. Kong Gateway Enterprise, while more expensive, offers comprehensive features that justify the cost with open-source versions available for startups. Users appreciate its ROI for scalability and customizability.

To learn more, read our detailed 3scale API Management vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise

January 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

3scale API Management

Ranking in API Management

17th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Ranking in API Management

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 2.2%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.3%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

KavitaChavan

Associate Manager at Baariz

Lightweight solution but less flexible customization features

It lacks some features, and the product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it. One disadvantage is that for customization, it uses liquid templates. However, not everyone is familiar with liquid templates, so if you want to do some customized logging or other tasks, you may need to struggle a lot. Other solutions like IBM API Connect or Apigee use JavaScript, which is more developer-friendly. That's what I found.

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AmitKanodia

Cloud & Integration CoE Head at Capgemini

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.

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

"It's good that they aren't adding a lot of features like ESP, etc. It's okay with just being a gateway."

"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."

"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."

"To me, the most valuable feature of 3scale API Management is that it lets you add a backend to the product. I also like that you can integrate it well with OpenShift clusters, making 3scale API Management a useful solution."

"The product is stable."

"I like the API automation."

"The standard deployment is very simple."

More 3scale API Management 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."

"In terms of stability, the tool's team has made some good efforts, and my company is very happy with the product's approach."

"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."

"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."

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

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

"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

Cons

"The user experience could be better. The developer portal is too complex and hard to configure."

"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."

"I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with."

"We tried to use the portal, but we decided that it wasn't enough. The content management system (CMS) is not easy to use if you want to customize things, and it's hard to get someone who has the knowledge to work with the CMS."

"What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful."

"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."

"What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported."

"3scale API Management only supports restful APIs and doesn't support SOAP."

"The technical support team's response time needs to be improved."

"The software version upgrade process should be improved."

"Kong Enterprise needs to improve its pricing, which starts at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pricing should be based on API usage rather than monthly. It should improve its documentation as well."

"The ease of billing is lost when Kong is not available directly on the Azure marketplace. This is one area where they can improve."

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

"The developer portal needs to be improved."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."

"The cost was around $45,000 per year."

"3scale API Management has reasonable pricing, judging from its competitor, Kong. My organization pays yearly for the 3scale API Management license, though I'm unable to give the exact figure because every single day there are new clusters deployed. I'm in charge of three to four clusters in my team, but give or take, it costs a few thousand lakhs."

"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."

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

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

"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."

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

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

"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about 3scale API Management?

The product is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for 3scale API Management?

I rate the product’s pricing as two out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?

The deployment process could be easier.

See all answers

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?

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM API Connect vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Apigee vs 3scale API Management

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs 3scale API Management

Compared 13% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs 3scale API Management

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs 3scale API Management

Compared 8% of the time

More 3scale API Management Competitors

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 14% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

WSO2 API Manager vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 11% of the time

Kong Konnect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

API Management

March 2025

Download 3scale API Management product report

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

February 2025

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Overview

3scale is an API management platform that delivers flexible, highly scalable solutions to package, distribute, control, and monetize your APIs, giving you the power to make the most of your API program.

Share company data, content, or services through Web or mobile applications.
Provide an API to external organizations, internal teams, or both.
Avoid the hassle and constant maintenance of building a solution from scratch.

3scale delivers centralized API management features through a distributed, cloud-hosted layer. The platform includes built-in features to help you build a more successful API program, including access control, rate limits, payment gateway integration, and developer experience tools.

Red Hat

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

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform

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

Buyer's Guide

3scale API Management vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise

January 2025

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