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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs MuleSoft API Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MuleSoft API Manager
Ranking in API Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.0%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MuleSoft API Manager is 5.4%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 26, 2021
 

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.
Dipanjan_Nandi - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable testing stubs and policy enforcement with room for better security and cost management
From an API management perspective, MuleSoft's API Manager is not as powerful as some other tools available. Features like monetization and advanced security, which are present in Apigee, are missing. I also want the API Manager to be used as a separate product apart from MuleSoft's other integration solutions. Additionally, the licensing cost is high, and many clients are looking to switch due to this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"The solution provides good performance."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"The most effective features of Anypoint API Manager for policy enforcement include security enforcement, rate limiting, client enforcement, traffic control, service level agreement policies, and caching policies."
"The solution has been very stable."
"The ease of policy maintenance and API functionality are key features for me. They streamline business processes by allowing configurable control over policies, instead of writing codes and making maintenance more straightforward."
"The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies."
"MuleSoft Anypoint API Manager is a great solution. I like it very much because of its speed of delivery and because it allows API-led integration."
"It is a good management tool for controlling purposes."
"The most important features are the API management and API development."
"The product improved data exchange processes by enhancing communication between various messaging queues. There was a heavy reliance on queues for indexing clusters and data transfer in this particular environment. The product facilitated the transfer of messages from one queue to another, ensuring data flow and processing across different topics."
 

Cons

"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."
"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."
"The software version upgrade process should be improved."
"The ease of billing is lost when Kong is not available directly on the Azure marketplace. This is one area where they can improve."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"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."
"There should be more pricing options or certain discounts for the education sector."
"Their studio performance is very slow, it requires a lot of memory, and should be improved."
"The dashboards in Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager could improve."
"The initial setup, if you go back three or three and a half years, definitely, for us, was complex."
"We find that the enterprise level is lacking scalability."
"It can offer workflows, orchestration, and webhooks."
"Migrating any existing middleware platform to Mulesoft is difficult because of the transformation, conversion and integration involved. Better tools are needed to achieve quicker time to market."
"I would like to see more automation. Operations are done manually. It should also automate in the operation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"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."
"The licensing model is based on how many cores are used. It is a very simple licensing scheme."
"It's not very expensive, reasonably priced. There are no additional costs."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as six and a half to seven."
"I'm unsure about licensing costs because I'm not the person who handles this. But, ballpark, it's probably somewhere around $300,000-$400,000 or something like that."
"I think that it is pretty expensive."
"The pricing for this solution is cheaper than GCP and Bluemix."
"The pricing is quite reasonable and affordable."
"The price of Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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 Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy to implement and learn; it provides several options for deployment, (including ...
What do you like most about Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution for securing APIs stem from the tool's ability to allow users to deploy policies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager?
The licensing cost of MuleSoft is high compared to other solutions like Apigee and Azure API Management, leading some clients to prefer those instead.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Anypoint API Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Coca-Cola, Splunk, Citrix, UCSF, Vertu, State of Colorado, National Post, TiVo, Deakin, LLS, Oldcastle Precast, ParcelPoint, Justice Systems, Ube, Sumitomo Corporation, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Groupe Initiatives, Camelot, Panviva
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. MuleSoft API Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.