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Apollo GraphOS vs Kong Gateway Enterprise comparison

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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
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
14th
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 November 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Apollo GraphOS is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 3.4%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apollo GraphOS0.8%
Kong Gateway Enterprise3.4%
Other95.8%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Caroline Selvapathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Software QA Engineer at wipro
Federated teams have shipped independently and have achieved safe, observable schema changes
To improve Apollo GraphOS, I suggest focusing on specific outcomes, reducing incidents, and enhancing performance. If I had to pick one thing to improve, I would pick two small things: first, the local development experience can be a bit heavy, and second, the documentation for new features such as connectors and the MCP server is still catching up. Regarding needed improvements, I want to add two top insights that real users mentioned: local dev and debugging, router cold start with more than 10 subgraphs, pricing and observability retention, documentation for new features, and small UX improvements in Studio or Explorer.
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

"Apollo GraphOS has positively impacted our organization by reducing unwanted code and helping us combine multiple services."
"The most valuable features of Apollo GraphOS OS for me are its security and authentication processes."
"Apollo GraphOS has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to streamline our GraphQL APIs for the front end and enabling us to grow much faster."
"Apollo GraphOS has had a positive impact by improving the way we manage and evolve our GraphQL APIs."
"Overall, Apollo GraphOS has been a valuable asset."
"Apollo GraphOS has positively impacted my organization by improving API reliability, streamlining schema management, and reducing deployment risk, which made collaboration between developers more efficient."
"Schema Registry and Schema Checks have helped my team, and Usage Insights and Observability make a significant difference."
"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."
"The route limiting feature is very valuable."
"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."
"Kong Enterprise comes with some ready plug-ins, which is very good for the customers."
"In our buying companies' perspective, it was easier to use compared to other platforms. The markets were pretty familiar with the solutions."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it seamlessly supports a vast number of tools."
"There are a few features that I like about Kong when it comes to authentication and authorization. Specifically, being able to use Kong for role-based access control (RBAC), and then further being able to integrate the RBAC mechanism with our enterprise directory, was very useful."
"The most valuable features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"The clients that we have already deployed are happy with it."
 

Cons

"An improvement I would suggest for Apollo GraphOS is in the initial setup, which could have fewer configurations of API keys, CI/CD, or routers."
"I rated it six out of ten because while it offers useful capabilities such as schema management, schema validation, and API observability, I feel there are several areas that need improvement."
"Apollo GraphOS could be improved with simpler pricing, more transparent usage and cost reporting, easier onboarding for new teams and learners, and more detailed documentation and troubleshooting guidance for complex GraphQL."
"There’s room for improvement in schema collaboration tools, especially in large teams where multiple developers are working on overlapping parts of the API."
"If I had to pick one thing to improve, I would pick two small things: first, the local development experience can be a bit heavy, and second, the documentation for new features such as connectors and the MCP server is still catching up."
"The documentation about the Federation could be clearer."
"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."
"The reason I held back from giving it a perfect score is that some enterprise scenarios still require additional effort."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"The solution should include policy features that are available in other solutions like MuleSoft API manager but missing in Kong Enterprise."
"They could focus more on pricing."
"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."
"We would like to see an automatic data API when we have a table in the database."
"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."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The licensing is expensive."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
University
10%
Program Development Consultancy
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
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?
I think Apollo GraphOS could be improved with more beginner-friendly documentation and deeper customization options for dashboards so that people could easily understand the dashboard and have clea...
What is your primary use case for Apollo GraphOS?
My main use case for Apollo GraphOS is to manage, monitor, and optimize GraphQL APIs. It helps to organize schemas, improve API performance, and make it easier to collaborate and control access acr...
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: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.