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Modern, Lightweight API Gateway with Competitive Functionality
What do you like best about the product?
It's very much competitive with functionality provided my modern api gateway. Latest technologies used and make very lighter.
What do you dislike about the product?
The UI could be better, but I still like how it helps everyone move away from what they’re currently using and explore the features.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Better policies and stronger support policies are needed for industry-standard companies.
Fast-to-Deploy API Gateway with a Rich Plugin Ecosystem
What do you like best about the product?
A fast-to-deploy API gateway that you can get up and running in a minute with Docker, plus a lot of plugins.
What do you dislike about the product?
Memory & Performance Overhead
Wait, isn't Kong famous for being fast? Yes, but there’s a catch:
Plugin Bloat: Every plugin you enable adds a small amount of latency. If you stack 15+ plugins (Auth, Logging, Rate Limiting, Transformer, etc.) on a single route, you will see your P99 latency start to creep up.
Resource Usage: Because it runs on Nginx, it’s highly efficient, but if you're running it in a "sidecar" pattern in Kubernetes for every single microservice, the cumulative memory footprint can become significant compared to lighter alternatives like Envoy.
Wait, isn't Kong famous for being fast? Yes, but there’s a catch:
Plugin Bloat: Every plugin you enable adds a small amount of latency. If you stack 15+ plugins (Auth, Logging, Rate Limiting, Transformer, etc.) on a single route, you will see your P99 latency start to creep up.
Resource Usage: Because it runs on Nginx, it’s highly efficient, but if you're running it in a "sidecar" pattern in Kubernetes for every single microservice, the cumulative memory footprint can become significant compared to lighter alternatives like Envoy.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With your technical background, Kong feels “fast” because it can replace months of custom coding with just minutes of configuration.
Flexible API Management with a Steep Learning Curve
What do you like best about the product?
I really appreciate Kong Gateway's plugin-based architecture and flexibility. It allows us to centralize security and traffic management while keeping services simple, which scales well in cloud-native environments. The architecture helps us to centralize cross-cutting concerns like authentication, rate limiting, and observability, significantly reducing duplication and keeping services focused on business logic. From a platform perspective, it improves consistency and makes it easier to enforce policies across all APIs without touching individual services. Its flexibility also helps us respond quickly to changing requirements by updating configurations at the gateway level instead of redeploying services, leading to better scalability, faster iteration, and a more maintainable system overall.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find the learning curve can be steep, especially for teams new to API gateways. Configuration complexity increases as the number of services grows. Debugging issues across plugins and routing rules can sometimes be non-trivial. The initial setup had a steep learning curve due to the Lua-based architecture and our plugins were in Go language, which was not supported out of the box.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Kong Gateway to centralize API management, improve scalability, and maintain consistency. Its plugin-based architecture helps focus services on business logic, while flexibility enables quick adaptation to changes, enhancing scalability, iteration speed, and system maintainability.
High-Performance, Scalable API Traffic Handling with Flexible Plugins
What do you like best about the product?
Kong Gateway stands out for its high performance and scalability, handling large volumes of API traffic with low latency.
Its flexible plugin architecture also makes it easy to extend functionality for security, monitoring, and authentication.
Its flexible plugin architecture also makes it easy to extend functionality for security, monitoring, and authentication.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve can be steep, especially when dealing with advanced configurations and plugins.
It can also become complex to manage at scale without strong operational practices and tooling in place.
It can also become complex to manage at scale without strong operational practices and tooling in place.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong Gateway solves the challenge of managing, securing, and scaling APIs in a centralized way, eliminating the need to handle these concerns individually in each service.
This benefits me by simplifying operations, improving security consistency, and allowing faster development and deployment of APIs.
This benefits me by simplifying operations, improving security consistency, and allowing faster development and deployment of APIs.
Seamless Integration and Automation, Needs Better Documentation
What do you like best about the product?
I like Kong Gateway's seamless integration and how it's based on Nginx reverse proxy, which allows me to set limits easily.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find the documentation poor, especially for the initial setup and configuration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Kong Gateway for API connectivity and automation. It offers seamless integration, leverages Nginx reverse proxy, and allows me to set limits easily.
Lightweight Yet Powerful
What do you like best about the product?
Lightweight but powerful, deploy anywhere
What do you dislike about the product?
control plane groups, lua based plugins, lua is dead
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Federated gateways, dev teams being self sufficient in managing their APIs
Native Kubernetes Support, but the Pricing Structure Needs Work
What do you like best about the product?
Native Kubernetes support is a key asset as thats the main entrypoint for our apps
What do you dislike about the product?
The pricing structure, I dont know exactly to what extent Kong is really OSS, as we build heavily on OSS software its important to know the licensing of the product / plugins
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We dont actively use Kong currently as more transparant open source gateways (like Tyk) currently cover all our needs
Kong’s Built-In API Key Management Makes Zero Trust Easy
What do you like best about the product?
Kong has built-in API key management and can implement Zero Trust.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some requires extensive time to setup/configuration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Maybe some observability on how traffic flows?
High-Performance, Cloud-Native API Gateway with Flexible Plugins and Strong Security
What do you like best about the product?
High performance – Built on NGINX/OpenResty, handles heavy API traffic with low latency
Plugin-based architecture – Easily add features like auth, rate limiting, logging
Scalable – Suitable for microservices and large distributed systems
Cloud-native friendly – Works well with Kubernetes and containerized environments
Strong security features – Supports OAuth2, JWT, key authentication, etc.
Centralized management – Control APIs from a single platform
Flexible deployment – Can be deployed on-prem, cloud, or hybrid
Active community & support – Good documentation and ecosystem
Plugin-based architecture – Easily add features like auth, rate limiting, logging
Scalable – Suitable for microservices and large distributed systems
Cloud-native friendly – Works well with Kubernetes and containerized environments
Strong security features – Supports OAuth2, JWT, key authentication, etc.
Centralized management – Control APIs from a single platform
Flexible deployment – Can be deployed on-prem, cloud, or hybrid
Active community & support – Good documentation and ecosystem
What do you dislike about the product?
Advanced features are paid – Many enterprise capabilities (analytics, RBAC, dev portal) require paid versions
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong Gateway helps by:
Centralizing API management
Improving security (auth, rate limiting)
Handling traffic efficiently
Standardizing policies across services
Benefit: Saves development time, improves scalability, and makes APIs more secure and manageable.
Centralizing API management
Improving security (auth, rate limiting)
Handling traffic efficiently
Standardizing policies across services
Benefit: Saves development time, improves scalability, and makes APIs more secure and manageable.
Intuitive API Management with Seamless Security
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how with Kong Gateway, we can easily apply security for our APIs, which makes it very user-friendly. I like the interface of Kong Gateway for users because it's clear, and even a user who is new to Kong Gateway can easily use it. It's also nice that we can easily set it up with the help of the helpline.
What do you dislike about the product?
The trial period is too short; I'd like it to be extended beyond 45 days.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Kong Gateway helps us easily apply security for our APIs and has a clear, user-friendly interface.
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