Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Postman comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Postman
Ranking in API Management
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
API Monitoring Software (1st), API Testing Tools (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.6%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Postman is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

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.
Anagha Mahadik - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution simplifies web service testing with impressive speed and accessibility
It is very easy for me to use and I highly prefer it compared to SoapUI and other products for performing its job. It is more handy and faster. It has impacted us very nicely. Postman is used for free by us. I'm not sure if there might be a paid version for multiple users. It is a very good product used for development. It is easy to install, as well as to learn, particularly for new users, even if they are not developers. I taught my business analyst to use it. I just showed them once, and it was easy for them to understand. For example, I gave them the URL and request format and asked them to test independently. They were able to use it on their own and do their testing as well. It was a good experience, especially for generally smart people, like those we usually hire in our company. It is pretty easy to explain, and learning it is not complex.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."
"We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"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."
"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."
"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"Postman allows you to incorporate and export the test cases we create. It enables me to share the test cases with my colleagues, so I don't have to copy them into an Excel sheet. Postman lets me export the dataset and share it with my team. They can use my test case for their testing."
"We are using the automation and performance testing tools."
"The most valuable feature is the user interface because it provides a clear space for the URL, headers, body, prerequisites, and tests."
"The scalability is good."
"We use it for REST API testing. Feature-wise, it is pretty lightweight. It is pretty fast, and we don't have to do a lot of things. We can just simply go and post our endpoint, and it gives different kinds of authorizations. We usually use authentication 2.0, which is the most common industry practice. So, it has the support for authorization through 2.0."
"One of the biggest advantages of Postman is its user-base approach."
"It helps me to test APIs independently. It also supports hosting."
"It's easy to see different versions of responses."
 

Cons

"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 solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"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 product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The software version upgrade process should be improved."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"They could focus more on pricing."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"The product lacks a good console."
"They should integrate the solution with one of the CRM solutions."
"I would like to see improvements in the maintenance of the scripts and their collections. It is really painful that the user cannot drag and drop. It was also painful to create the standard suite of operations for the product. I am not sure if this is improved in the tool’s latest versions. The maintenance of the complex scenarios prompted us to use the solution only for unit testing. In the future, we may switch to the k6 framework."
"I have display issues in my Windows that need to be fixed."
"The management of endpoints' headers sometimes conflicts with APIs that require information in the body, leading to difficulties."
"There is no support for the testing of the SOAP APIs."
"Postman quality assurance could improve when doing tests."
"The tool needs to have a reporting feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The licensing is expensive."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"This tool is open-source and free to download and use."
"We do not pay any money for Postman."
"Postman is an open-source product. It is free to download from Google."
"The solution has a licensing fee which might be prohibitive."
"This solution offers a free version."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"It is free."
"We are using its free version."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 Postman compare with Apache JMeter?
Postman lets you easily define variables, which then get updated automatically. This is a huge time-saver and makes processes very efficient. We can also export the test cases we create and share t...
What do you like most about Postman?
The product is easy to implement.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Postman?
Postman is open-source, so the cost is minimal compared to commercial platforms.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
PayPal, Shopify, Microsoft, Adobe, Atlassian, Twitter, BestBuy, Coursera
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Postman and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.