Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

Kong and WSO2 are both solutions in the API Management category. Kong is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.6, while WSO2 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8. Kong holds a 6.0% mindshare in APIM, compared to WSO2’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Kong users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of WSO2 users who would recommend it.

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Read 24 Kong Gateway Enterprise reviews

10,739 Views
8,279 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WSO2 API Manager

Read 39 WSO2 API Manager reviews

7,769 Views
5,455 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Kong Gateway Enterprise

WSO2 API Manager

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Kong Gateway Enterprise and WSO2 API Manager compete in the API management category. Kong Gateway Enterprise has an upper hand in operational efficiency, while WSO2 API Manager stands out for its comprehensive features.

Features: Kong Gateway Enterprise is recognized for its lightweight and scalable system, robust support for high traffic volumes, and competitive pricing. WSO2 API Manager offers extensive integration capabilities, customizable analytics, and a rich feature set, making it a valued investment.

Room for Improvement: Kong Gateway Enterprise could enhance its monitoring capabilities and offer deeper insights. Users express a desire for expanded feature options and improved UX design. WSO2 API Manager could benefit from a more streamlined installation process, better documentation, and enhanced user interface consistency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kong Gateway Enterprise provides quick setup and responsive customer service, facilitating rapid adoption. WSO2 API Manager, although offering a robust support system, tends to have a more complex deployment process and extended setup time.

Pricing and ROI: Kong Gateway Enterprise users appreciate attractive pricing structures and satisfactory ROI, attributing cost-effectiveness to its performance benefits. WSO2 API Manager, despite higher initial setup costs, delivers strong ROI through its comprehensive feature set, justifying its price for users seeking extensive functionalities.

To learn more, read our detailed Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Kong Gateway Enterprise

Ranking in API Management

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

WSO2 API Manager

Ranking in API Management

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.0%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.7%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Management

Featured Reviews

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.

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VishalSingh14

IT Engineer at Reliance Industries Ltd

Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration

I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.

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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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."

"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."

"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."

"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."

"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."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"Based on the information I have, the solution's most valuable feature is its capability of implementing custom solutions."

"WSO2 API Manager's most valuable features are the simple interface that is easy to use and the APIs lifecycle."

"Helped us to quickly publish our Microservice APIs and enforcing different policies against them, it comes up with features like Security, Throttling policy and it provides complete access to customize API's which actually saves development effort and time."

"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."

"The solution is stable."

"We could easily deploy APIs on WSO2 API Manager, and CORS configuration was easy to manage."

"API management lifecycle is the most valuable."

"Yes WSO2 API Manager is scalable"

More WSO2 API Manager pros

Cons

"They could focus more on pricing."

"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."

"We are facing issues with the solution's features like reports and traffic analysis."

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

"The software version upgrade process should be improved."

"There should be an easier way to integrate with other solutions, even though it's the same API solution layer. Comparability will be a good improvement."

"The developer portal needs to be improved."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"From what I have experienced from the versions I have tried, they could improve on the multi-tenant environments to allow some kind of SSO single sign-on between tenant."

"We found WSO2 API Manager to be a bit complex."

"I would like to see improvements in the speed of the solution as it can be a bit slow compared to other platforms along with addressing memory issues would be beneficial."

"The initial setup can be difficult."

"Providing easy configuration for email and SMS notifications, layout and customization of admin and developer landing pages."

"Lacks some new features and updated functionalities."

"The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved."

"The user interface needs to improve, it is a bit outdated."

More WSO2 API Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is expensive."

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

"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

"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."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

"I think the other competitors that are providing the same solution are quite expensive. WSO2 API Manager is quite cheap."

"My previous company paid about 1.2 million dollars, and my current company pays about 300k. Both companies are at the enterprise level."

"The challenge is the increasing pricing, which has led some customers to consider alternatives, like using Spring Boot solutions instead. The rising costs, especially as cores and usage increase, have been a concern, prompting some to migrate to other products."

"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."

"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."

"We have not opted for the paid version of WSO2 but we have implemented the free and open source WSO2 software to a great extent and it is working as per our expectation."

"We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."

"For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."

More WSO2 API Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?

It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?

In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. The entire API publication or API creation was done using a particular pipeline we had developed. ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?

WSO2 API Manager is a cumulative security-based software, and I had a good experience with it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 16% of the time

Apigee vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 10% of the time

Layer7 API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 7% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Apigee vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 24% of the time

Apache APISIX vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 11% of the time

3scale API Management vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More WSO2 API Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise

November 2024

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 API Manager

October 2024

Download WSO2 API Manager product report

Learn More

Kong

WSO2

Overview

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.

WSO2 API Manager is a comprehensive platform that allows organizations to design, publish, and manage APIs.

It provides a centralized interface for API governance, security, and analytics.

With features like API monetization and developer portal, it enables businesses to drive innovation and create new revenue streams.

Sample Customers

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

1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

October 2024

Free Report: Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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