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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
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
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 (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.1%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Traefik Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.8% 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.
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

"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"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."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"I like everything about it. It provides the security we need."
"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 tool handles scalability pretty easily. Adding more instances of services and all are pretty intuitive to do using Traefik Enterprise."
 

Cons

"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"The tool needs improvement in UX."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"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."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"The software version upgrade process should be improved."
"The main challenge, in my opinion, is the price. It's difficult to convince our management to approve the budget to purchase it from our vendor. There are no technical problems."
"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

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The licensing is expensive."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"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
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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?
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...
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
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