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Apollo GraphOS vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Apollo GraphOS
Ranking in API Management
29th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
3.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Apollo GraphOS is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 4.3%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kong Gateway Enterprise4.3%
Apollo GraphOS0.7%
Other95.0%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

KajalSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Development Engineering Testing at HighLevel
Centralized schema governance has improved API visibility and now reduces release risks
Apollo GraphOS is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where it could improve. The onboarding experience could be simpler for teams that are new to GraphQL. There are many powerful capabilities available, but it can take some time for new users to understand how everything fits together. I would also appreciate even more customizable dashboards and reporting options. Different teams often care about different metrics, so having greater flexibility in how insights are presented would be useful. From a larger organization perspective, additional guidance around governance and best practices could help teams adopt the platform more consistently across multiple services.
KS
Business Consultant at Ernst & Young
Modernization projects have progressed well but documentation and security guidance still need work
Bringing in additional features to Kong Gateway Enterprise would not necessarily help it. Improving the existing features, increasing security, and adding robustness would be more beneficial. The focus should be on stabilizing the product, improving it, and increasing the documentation. Kong should focus on how the product can be self-onboarded or self-implemented, as this would ease and help customers significantly. The necessary deployment of Kong Gateway Enterprise, API management, and guidance on how customers can use it or improve that area would be helpful. Security is a major concern, especially with new security architecture coming into place. These are the areas that should be prioritized. Beyond these areas, I do not see anything lacking. Kong Gateway Enterprise is quite comprehensive.

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 features of Apollo GraphOS OS for me are its security and authentication processes."
"Apollo GraphOS has significantly enhanced both the developer experience and product delivery timelines by offering a centralized approach to managing GraphQL schemas and services, helping reduce overhead and improve collaboration between frontend and backend teams."
"Apollo GraphOS positively impacts my organization by increasing confidence in API releases."
"Apollo GraphOS has positively impacted our organization by reducing unwanted code and helping us combine multiple services."
"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."
"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"The solution provides good performance."
"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 Enterprise has excellent plugin support."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"The route limiting feature is very valuable."
 

Cons

"Apollo GraphOS OS is using a detailed project, and it can be time-consuming because it has a lot of data to manage. It sometimes takes longer than three seconds, which can affect loading times and lead to user dissatisfaction. I would like to see improved performance."
"Apollo GraphOS is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where it could improve."
"There’s room for improvement in schema collaboration tools, especially in large teams where multiple developers are working on overlapping parts of the API."
"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."
"Kong Enterprise can improve the customization to be able to do the integration properly."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"From an improvement perspective, the product should offer more readily available connectors and also allow for more seamless AI integrations."
"For us, implementing Kong Gateway Enterprise with existing infrastructures and the cloud in tandem requires more effort than implementing MuleSoft or Azure APIM or AWS."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing is expensive."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
University
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apollo GraphOS?
I am not sensitive to nor very knowledgeable about the pricing and setup cost.
What needs improvement with Apollo GraphOS?
Apollo GraphOS is a strong platform, but there are a few areas where it could improve. The onboarding experience could be simpler for teams that are new to GraphQL. There are many powerful capabili...
What is your primary use case for Apollo GraphOS?
My main use case for Apollo GraphOS is managing and monitoring GraphQL APIs across multiple services. From a quality engineering perspective, I use it to understand schema changes, identify potenti...
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 needs improvement with Kong Enterprise?
Bringing in additional features to Kong Gateway Enterprise would not necessarily help it. Improving the existing features, increasing security, and adding robustness would be more beneficial. The f...
What is your primary use case for Kong Enterprise?
Our primary use cases for Kong Gateway Enterprise are modernizations, migrations, and digitalizations of financial institutions. These are the primary areas we are looking for.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Apollo GraphOS vs. Kong Gateway Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.