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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
9th
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 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 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 - 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

"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"We use the solution for load-balancing, caching, and rate-limiting APIs."
"Kong Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"The solution's technical support is good and fast in terms of responsiveness and problem-solving skills."
"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."
"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."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"The most beneficial feature of WSO2 API Manager is its capability to use Swagger to define and then populate the API."
"WSO2 API Manager is a stable solution."
"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."
"WSO2 API Manager is easy to use."
"The most interesting feature is its Mac-based function."
"We could easily deploy APIs on WSO2 API Manager, and CORS configuration was easy to manage."
"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."
"WSO2 API Manager is open-source, which offers a range of features not found in other open-source API tools."
 

Cons

"Kong Enterprise has decided not to support the web portal feature anymore, but I think that feature should stay in the on-premises solution."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"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 product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"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."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"The interface needs to be modernized and made more user friendly so the product continues to have a growing community of users."
"I can say that user management is not really flexible. So, if I want to create 1,000 store users, I can't do it as a publisher. You have to register as a store user using the store URL."
"In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool."
"WSO2 API Manager should improve its marketplace subscription model and documentation in order to reach a higher level in the market."
"The solution’s interface should be more user-friendly."
"From a product perspective, the first thing is that although the documentation provided by WSO2 is good, it could be much better. We're in the middle of a complex migration, moving away from VMs to Kubernetes with the latest version of WSO2 and good documentation is essential to us right now."
"They don't have different URLs for administrators."
"They are developing another platform called Choreo that allows you to create API itself using the WSO2 programming language Ballerina. It would be great if they added a direct connection between Choreo and API Manager, that would be great. I think they are working on that, but I'm not sure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"The licensing is expensive."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."
"WSO2 API Manager is an open-source solution."
"We use the open-source version — the free version."
"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."
"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."
"WSO2 API Manager is a costly solution, and its pricing is not competitive enough compared to other products."
"It's not expensive, but it could be cheaper."
"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."
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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
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
7%
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.
 

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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.