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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 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
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
40
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 WSO2 API Manager is 4.9%, up from 4.1% 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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise is its capability to integrate with various security tools."
"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."
"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."
"I like everything about it. It provides the security we need."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"WSO2 API Manager is open-source, which offers a range of features not found in other open-source API tools."
"WSO2 is very stable."
"WSO2 API Manager has a user-friendly model."
"We use the vanilla version of the WSO2 API Manager and integrate additional features ourselves. The basic features of the API Manager, such as blacklisting and whitelisting, are very helpful. We also created dashboards."
"One of the great things about WSO2 API Manager is that it is so easy to adopt. And because it's an open source solution, we're able to extend the implementation any time to suit our company needs better."
"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."
"The documentation is good."
"Functionality-wise, I like WSO2 API Manager - Publisher API and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus."
 

Cons

"The OS upgrades are not as frequent as they should be and they are bulky."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"Lacks some new features and updated functionalities."
"Dashboards for application monitoring of the APIs would be beneficial, allowing us to check for faulty APIs."
"We found WSO2 API Manager to be a bit complex."
"The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved."
"I think they could greatly improve the general UX with their solutions."
"For fresh graduates and engineers, the setup process can be very difficult."
"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 pricing models offered by WSO2 API Manager could be more flexible and should offer different options so that more people can access them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"The licensing is expensive."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"It's not expensive, but it could be cheaper."
"For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."
"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."
"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."
"I am using the free version."
"We use the open-source version — the free version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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...
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.
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.
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.
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.