Alternatives to Kong
Cloud-native API gateway and management platform.
Kong ranks #2 of 8 in API gateways, with an Alt Score of 100. It is licensed under Apache-2.0, open source with paid hosting from $25/month and available on the web. 13 of 13 checklist rows are verified against a public source.
Kong is an open-source, cloud-native API gateway and management platform for routing, securing, and observing APIs and microservices, with a large plugin ecosystem.
Platform and API engineering teams who need to route, secure, and govern API traffic (and increasingly LLM/AI traffic) across microservices and Kubernetes — from individual developers self-hosting the free open-source gateway to enterprises running Kong Konnect's hosted control plane at scale.
Kong Gateway is a free, Apache-2.0 open-source API gateway with authentication, rate limiting, request/response transformation, and a 100+ plugin ecosystem (Lua, Go, JavaScript) plus a Kubernetes Ingress Controller; Kong Konnect layers on a hosted SaaS control plane with developer portals, real-time analytics/observability, service catalog, and AI Gateway features, priced per-resource on the paid Plus tier (starting around $25/month per control plane) or custom Enterprise pricing.
Kong runs as a lightweight NGINX/OpenResty-based proxy sitting in front of your services, configured via a RESTful Admin API, a web UI (Kong Manager or Konnect), or declarative/GitOps-style YAML config (decK) that can be driven from CI/CD pipelines; behavior is extended by attaching plugins to services, routes, or consumers.
Why people leave Kong
Dashed reasons are sourced facts; the rest are opinions. Vendors can dispute.
Sign in to add a reason — new reasons go through moderation before appearing.
Ranked alternatives
Ordered by Alt Score. Click any score to see the breakdown.
Gravitee is an open-source API management platform with an event-native gateway supporting REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and async APIs, plus access management and a developer portal.
Tyk is an open-source API gateway and full lifecycle management platform with a developer portal, analytics, and support for REST, GraphQL, and gRPC.
WSO2 API Manager is an open-source, full-lifecycle API management platform for creating, publishing, securing, and monetizing APIs; self-hosted or as SaaS (Choreo/Bijira).
Apigee is Google Cloud API management platform for designing, securing, publishing, monetizing, and analyzing APIs at enterprise scale.
KrakenD is a high-performance, stateless open-source API gateway that aggregates and transforms backend services through declarative configuration.
Traefik Hub is an API management and gateway platform built on Traefik Proxy, offering Kubernetes-native ingress, API security, and a developer portal.
Feature comparison
Rows come from the API gateways checklist (17 rows). Human-verified cells only. ? means the value has not been verified.
| API gateways checklist | Kong | Gravitee | Tyk | WSO2 API Manager | Apigee | KrakenD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | ||||||
| Starts at | ||||||
| License | ||||||
| Platforms | ||||||
| Open source | ||||||
| Self-hostable | ||||||
| Managed / SaaS option | ||||||
| Rate limiting & throttling | ||||||
| Authentication (OAuth/JWT/API keys) | ||||||
| Developer portal | ||||||
| Plugin / extension ecosystem | ||||||
| Kubernetes-native / ingress | ||||||
| GraphQL support | ||||||
| gRPC support | ||||||
| Analytics & monitoring | ||||||
| Declarative / GitOps config | ||||||
| WAF / security policies |
Every fact and feature listed for Kong is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
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Status active verified 2026-07-17
Latest Kong Gateway release (3.9.3) published 2026-06-17, one month before this research date, indicating ongoing active development.
3.9.3
https://github.com/Kong/kong/releases/tag/3.9.3 -
License Apache-2.0 verified 2026-07-17
Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kong/kong/master/LICENSE -
Pricing model OSS + paid hosting verified 2026-07-17
Kong Gateway core is free/open source (Apache-2.0, self-hosted); Kong Konnect (SaaS control plane) is paid, billed per gateway/resource on the Plus tier or custom Enterprise pricing.
Plus Charged per Gateway per month, bill monthly
https://konghq.com/pricing -
Starts at $25/month verified 2026-07-17
Cheapest paid Konnect Plus resource (Serverless API Gateway control plane); Plus has no flat base fee, costs are per-resource. Kong Gateway itself remains free to self-host.
$25/month per control plane
https://konghq.com/pricing -
Platforms Web verified 2026-07-17
Konnect control plane is a Web app; Kong Gateway itself is self-hosted software that runs on Linux via Docker/Kubernetes/bare metal, not a desktop or mobile app.
Whether you’re running in the cloud, on bare metal, or using containers, you can find every supported distribution on our official installation page.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kong/kong/master/README.md -
Open source Yes verified 2026-07-17
Kong Gateway is the world’s most adopted open‑source API gateway
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
Self-hostable Yes verified 2026-07-17
Run Kong Gateway in any environment, platform, and implementation pattern — from on-prem to cloud, Kubernetes, and serverless
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
Managed / SaaS option Yes verified 2026-07-17
Kong Konnect Free trial $0 for 30 days no credit card required Try everything that the Kong Konnect platform offers with a self-guided tour.
https://konghq.com/pricing -
Rate limiting & throttling Yes verified 2026-07-17
Manage ACME certificates, basic rate limiting, and lightweight caching.
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
Authentication (OAuth/JWT/API keys) Yes verified 2026-07-17
Common methods of API authentication - Basic Auth, HMAC, JWT Key Auth, limited OAuth 2.0, limited LDAP
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
Developer portal Yes verified 2026-07-17
Drive API adoption with a portal for developers and AI agents
https://konghq.com/products/kong-konnect/features/developer-portal -
Plugin / extension ecosystem Yes verified 2026-07-17
Plugins for enforcing traffic controls, rate limiting, req/res transformations, logging, monitoring and including a plugin developer hub.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kong/kong/master/README.md -
Kubernetes-native / ingress Yes verified 2026-07-17
Kong runs natively on Kubernetes thanks to its official Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kong/kong/master/README.md -
GraphQL support Yes verified 2026-07-17
Convert GraphQL queries to REST requests. Rate limit and cache GraphQL queries
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
gRPC support Yes verified 2026-07-17
Plugin support for a wide range of protocols including REST, gRPC, GraphQL, WebSockets, UDP, SOAP and Kafka.
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
Analytics & monitoring Yes verified 2026-07-17
Ensure API and AI performance with real-time observability
https://konghq.com/products/kong-konnect/features/api-observability -
Declarative / GitOps config Yes verified 2026-07-17
Drive a GitOps flow of API design and execution
https://konghq.com/products/kong-gateway -
WAF / security policies Yes verified 2026-07-17
Kong does not ship a product literally branded 'WAF', but offers a Security plugin category covering Bot Detection, IP Restriction, Injection Protection, JSON Threat Protection, and OPA-based authoriz
Injection Protection Detect and block injection attacks using regular expressions Enterprise only
https://developer.konghq.com/plugins/
FAQ
Yes. Zuplo has a free tier or is fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.
Gravitee, Tyk and WSO2 API Manager — every license claim links its source.