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 #8 with an average rating of 7.9. Kong holds a 6.0% mindshare in APIM, compared to WSO2’s 4.8% 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

10,260 Views
7,941 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

WSO2 API Manager

Read 40 WSO2 API Manager reviews

7,438 Views
5,278 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: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

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

WSO2 API Manager

Ranking in API Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.0%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.8%, up from 4.1% 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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Ritesh_Shah

Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

A complete platform for building, integrating, and exposing your digital services as managed APIs in the cloud, on-premise, and hybrid architectures to drive your digital transformation strategy.

WSO2 API Manager could improve by adding external API security features, which is one area where there is room for enhancement. Internally, API security is strong, and all other necessary features are already available. It has a solid marketplace, supports both Docker and standalone setups, and offers great enterprise integration. The developer portal has greatly improved the user experience, making it simple and user-friendly wherever we’ve implemented it. Overall, it’s not as complicated as other API gateways.

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

"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."

"The features I like include ease of operation and implementation in a cloud environment, the dashboarding features for API statistics, and the user-friendly developer portal."

"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."

"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."

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

"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."

"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pros

"As far as I am aware this solution is the first API Publisher that allows you to create and publish API and to manage the API lifecycle."

"WSO2 API Manager provides OAuth2 token capabilities that our customers use to interact, onboard new customers, and provide approvals whenever a customer is onboarded."

"The user interface is easy to navigate, and the documentation is extensive. It's open-source, so everything is available, and we can create what we need. That's not necessarily a feature, but it's an advantage."

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

"The solution is stable."

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

"WSO2 API Manager is easy to use."

"There are a lot of tools to help the manager. WSO2 is very easy to install. It has all the principal functionalities that you think about when you want to put up the management solution. It's a very friendly tool."

More WSO2 API Manager pros

Cons

"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."

"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."

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

"The developer portal needs to be improved."

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

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

"The tool needs improvement in UX."

"The software version upgrade process should be improved."

More Kong Gateway Enterprise cons

"WSO2 API Manager could increase their security compliance."

"The professional support and licensing aspects of WSO have been a challenge."

"The tool's commercial aspect could be improved. Pricing varies with partners, so selecting the appropriate pricing can be challenging."

"WSO2 API Manager could improve the API approval system."

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

"The initial setup can be difficult."

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

"We had some problems with the reverse proxy not being able to invoke fully qualified domain names, so we have to build some custom scripts to solve this issue."

More WSO2 API Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

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

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."

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

More Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."

"We use the open-source version — the free version."

"I am using the free version."

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

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

"WSO2 API Manager is quite an expensive tool. I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."

"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."

More WSO2 API Manager pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which API Management solutions are best for your needs.

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824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

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...

See all answers

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?

One area for improvement is monitoring. Dashboards for application monitoring of the APIs would be beneficial, allowing us to check for faulty APIs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?

We use WSO2 API Manager for our microservices and our APIs, both internally and externally.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure API Management vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 15% 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

IBM API Connect vs Kong Gateway Enterprise

Compared 7% of the time

More Kong Gateway Enterprise Competitors

Apigee vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 25% of the time

Apache APISIX vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs WSO2 API Manager

Compared 14% 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

December 2024

Download Kong Gateway Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

WSO2 API Manager

November 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

December 2024

Free Report: Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager

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