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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Layer7 API Management 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Kong Gateway Enterprise
Ranking in API Management
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Layer7 API Management
Ranking in API Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.6%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Layer7 API Management is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ronald D'Souza - PeerSpot reviewer
Has great drag-and-drop features and it requires minimal coding
I have mainly implemented using Layer 7 API Management. Some of the major challenges we were able to meet with a quick release to market methodology. Some of the tasks which we achieved for our customers were: 1. Translation service from SOAP to REST and vice versa. 2. API service to DB (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, Snowflake, SAP HANA) -- Created Swagger APIs that were able to perform CRUD operation to the backend API mentioned above and provided routes to query and get data. 3. Integration with Payment gateway service providers to perform (transaction on behalf of the customer with third-party payment gateway service providers white labeled with our APIs ) -- Followed TMF standards for payment gateway integration with the Telcom world. 4. Orchestration of the API. Build multiple microservers and provided orchestration based on route, path, and data in the request and perform actions that would be communicated with multiple APIs and provide a single consolidated response. 5. Provided API-driven security (Oauth 2.0, JWT, SAML, Basic, and a variety of means) to access the API giving the developer the freedom to concentrate only on application/service/microservice and let the gateway handle the threat. 6. Seamless Mutual Authentication allowed good segregation between APIs in the DMZ and internal network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kong Gateway helped to improve performance. It's good enough for our users."
"The tool's scalability is good...The solution's technical support is good."
"This is a solid intrusion prevention system that combines a firewall and antivirus in a single solution."
"The route limiting feature is very valuable."
"Protocol transformation is the most valuable feature of Kong Enterprise."
"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."
"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 features of Kong Enterprise are the out-of-the-box open source easy functionality."
"The most valuable feature of Layer7 API Management is that their policy is really easy to develop and it is flexible."
"Simple to use and easy to develop APIs."
"Compared to other vendors, this product is much faster in coming up with new features, which is good."
"Every API that we get from external or from internal goes through this layer first, and it should not be a bottleneck. That was the problem we had before. Now it's no longer a bottleneck. It's more like a throughput, this process is less than 10 milliseconds for any particular API."
"It is a stable product."
"It is fairly stable for the Gateway side."
"It is able to withstand the number of API calls and handle different API requirements to secure, transform, log, and track API usage patterns."
"You can create little, custom Java assertions that you can insert to do your business logic, which might not be covered by the commercial product out-of-the-box."
 

Cons

"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."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"There should be an easier way to integrate with other solutions, even though it's the same API solution layer. Comparability will be a good improvement."
"Kong Enterprise fails to provide live tracing of the APIs, which is possible nowadays."
"The technical support team's response time needs to be improved."
"It becomes difficult if you try to scale it up to multiple clusters."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"The UI design could be improved in the next release."
"If they had different levels of support available then it would be easier to justify the costs."
"The only issue we have is that we have to buy an APM license separately for end-to-end monitoring."
"The cloud-native architecture of the product needs improvement."
"The Portal is not stable."
"One area where it certainly needs to improve is the way it allocates requests, in terms of rate limiting. Also, there is no native Kafka connectivity."
"The OTK, however, is a complex upgrade. They tend to change the schemas on the database behind it, between the versions, which can be a pain to have to migrate all of our existing clients from one database schema to the other."
"As well as the SOA Gateway - that is, the API Gateway; we call it the SOA Gateway - we also are now deploying the developer portal component of the SOA Gateway. That has limitations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"Kong Enterprise is cheaper than Apigee. I rate its pricing as four out of ten."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"The licensing is expensive."
"The product is reasonably priced because it goes by the SaaS model."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is reasonable for our company size."
"Purchase 4.0 now and wait until they flush out the 4.1 problems."
"Pricing for Layer7 API Management is excellent, so it's an eight out of ten. The product is less expensive than other solutions. Layer7 API Management charges you based on the number of transactions, so the enterprise-level pricing my company got was excellent."
"Licenses are required to operate the product, but I don't know much about the validity periods attached to it."
"It depends on your use case of course, how much you want to go with that, because it can get pricey and depends on the size of your company."
"There is an annual license for the use of this solution. I think we are paying for some support maintenance fees, included in that license. I don't know how it works. They should provide more information."
"Our customers found the product’s cost a little higher. They are looking for open-source solutions."
"At the time we bought the product it was a perpetual users license and there has been no need for additional licensing fees."
"I do not have experience with the pricing or licensing of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Layer7 API Management?
Pricing is more than average. While I am used to Layer7 API Management ( /products/layer7-api-management-reviews ), seeing other products makes the tool's pricing seem high.
What needs improvement with Layer7 API Management?
Broadcom's push for upgrades from version nine to ten, ten to 10.3, and onwards to twelve needs improvement in migration processes, especially with service dependencies. The migration path sometime...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA API Management, CA Live API Creator, Espresso Logic, CA API Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
1. IBM  2. Microsoft  3. Oracle  4. Salesforce  5. SAP  6. Cisco  7. Dell  8. HP  9. Adobe  10. VMware  11. Accenture  12. Capgemini  13. Deloitte  14. PwC  15. Ernst & Young  16. Infosys  17. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services)  18. Wipro  19. Cognizant  20. HCL Technologies  21. Tech Mahindra  22. Fujitsu  23. Hitachi  24. NEC  25. NTT Data  26. Ericsson  27. Nokia  28. Siemens  29. AT&T  30. Verizon  31. Vodafone  32. Orange
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Layer7 API Management and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.