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Amazon API Gateway vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon API Gateway's ROI is seen as cost-effective with pay-per-use, infrastructure security, and significant cost-benefit over self-development.
Sentiment score
7.6
Kong Gateway Enterprise offers scalability, advanced features, and reduces detection time, supporting efficient API delivery with economic benefits.
API Gateway saves time and secures my infrastructure, allowing effective deployment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon API Gateway support is efficient for enterprises, but challenges include high costs and limited self-support options.
Sentiment score
6.9
Kong Gateway Enterprise support is helpful and responsive, but users note delays and desire quicker, more capable assistance.
Within 15 minutes, we had a support engineer allocated via Amazon, and we were able to resolve the issue promptly.
Technical support is excellent, deserving a ten out of ten rating.
You open a chat, have your response, know what to do or what is wrong, and can resolve the problem.
The technical support from Kong Gateway Enterprise would be rated about eight, as we missed local technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon API Gateway is highly scalable, efficiently managing increased traffic and user numbers with reliable autoscaling and versatile application support.
Sentiment score
7.2
Kong Gateway Enterprise is praised for scalability across applications, but smaller entities face challenges due to resource constraints.
You don't need to worry about the scalability of Amazon API Gateway because AWS takes responsibility for the solution's scalability.
It is very scalable, and we don't need to hire additional engineers.
We've significantly increased our traffic from hitting it once or twice a minute to now hitting it ten to fifteen times within a minute.
The scalability of this solution would be rated about eight or nine.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
Amazon API Gateway is highly stable, receiving top marks for minimal downtime and excellent reliability across multiple regions.
Sentiment score
7.9
Kong Gateway Enterprise is stable with few issues, excellent architecture, and recommended strong configuration for optimal performance and versatility.
I've deployed it for a client with millions of users without issues.
Our applications are stable, owing partly to our architecture, which is spread across three regions.
I've not encountered unavailability or any issue that became a disaster.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon API Gateway needs improvements in pricing, support, integration, security, UI, user management, analytics, and performance optimization.
Kong Gateway Enterprise needs better pricing, integrations, API management, documentation, customization, support, and AI features for improved user experience.
A local version of the API Gateway would be beneficial for testing purposes without incurring extra costs.
I would appreciate more comprehensive telemetry information, diagnostics, and improved monitoring capabilities for the services and endpoints.
Apigee has the cloud EPG Microgateway resource, which can be put inside our Kubernetes cluster.
More plugins for additional integrations would be helpful and openness for traditional development languages, such as .NET, because many enterprises are looking for .NET solutions or incorporating with .NET solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon API Gateway's flexible pricing suits varying API demands; costs can spike with usage, but it's generally well-rated.
Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing is competitive, especially compared to Apigee, with value dependent on organizational needs and region.
With Amazon API Gateway, you pay for what you use.
However, my understanding is that it easily goes to $14,000 or $15,000 USD each month for each account, and we have several such accounts.
It is a really cheap product, but if used incorrectly, it can become expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon API Gateway offers seamless AWS integration, robust security, flexibility, quick deployment, and cost-effective management with a pay-as-you-go model.
Kong Gateway Enterprise provides scalable, secure API management with integration support, high performance, and adaptability via open-source community backing.
Rest API provides robust and more secure authentication features.
Additionally, it's cost-effective, even as our workload and the number of APIs we manage have increased.
It acts as a master tool, offering easy configuration and excellent integration capabilities with third-party services.
The most valuable features of Kong Gateway Enterprise are its seamless integration with Kubernetes and cloud, many plugins that can be incorporated in a solution, and its incorporation with low-code function systems.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon API Gateway
Ranking in API Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Amazon API Gateway is 13.0%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.7%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective serverless routing with room for extended timeout settings
We are using API Gateway to route the traffic to our Lambdas. Every API pass is linked to some of the Lambdas. When traffic hits CloudFront, it redirects it to API Gateway, which then redirects it to the respective Lambda server. We have different kinds of services invoked through these Lambdas…
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Apigee or Amazon API Gateway?
Amazon API Gateway is a platform that supports the creation and publication of API for web applications. The platform can support thousands of simultaneous API calls, and it provides monitoring, ma...
How does Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager compare with Amazon API Gateway?
I have found that Mulesoft Anypoint API Manager is the best integration tool out there for API management. It is easy to implement and learn; it provides several options for deployment, (including ...
Which is better - Azure API Management or Amazon API Gateway?
If you use Azure products, API Management is a great solution. It solves many of the problems of externalizing web services. For example, when you need versioning, establish a developer portal and ...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Fox Digital Consumer Group, iFlix, UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Miovision, Olympusat, PhotoVogue, Royale International Group, Veracode
Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon API Gateway vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.