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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs Tyk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tyk
Ranking in API Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 7.1%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tyk is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sudhanshu Dev - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom plugin capability with enhanced high traffic handling and lightweight performance
We use Kong for our API gateway, handling all public traffic. It is an open-source tool, and even though we are a startup, it provides us with stability without incurring high costs initially Kong has helped us by performing smoothly even when we receive millions of requests, which prevents any…
MarkDoherty - PeerSpot reviewer
Fastest to get up and running and fewer idiosyncrasies than competitors
In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly better communication with the customer base that would be my main issue with them. But as a product, it's very difficult to find any major faults.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It boasts remarkable speed and stability, and these qualities, particularly the gateway's resilience, are standout features for me."
"Good at intercepting traffic and modeling APIs around that."
"It offers a wide range of plugins that we leverage, including OIDC, Rate Limiting, Lambda functions, and more."
"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."
"Kong enterprise has significantly enhanced our ability to manage and secure our Microservices. Its most valuable feature is monitoring."
"Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend Kong Gateway Enterprise to other people."
"Kong's most valuable features are its lightweight performance when handling millions of requests and the ability to write custom plugins to enhance security, such as end-to-end encryption, even in the open-source version."
"You can set up workflows and write limited pieces of logic."
"The feature I find most valuable is that this solution allows us to manage our security."
"It is a good product for API management."
"The scalability is very good. That was a key factor in the selection, like how it could be pushed to high volume and scalability, which seemed to be very good."
"The portal for developers that this solution provides has great functionality."
"The most valuable feature is the load balancing with the circuit-breaker function."
 

Cons

"They could focus more on pricing."
"Because it is open-source, it should be less expensive than others."
"Understanding the configurations and knowing what needs to be done can be a bit difficult initially."
"The developer portal needs to be improved."
"The tool needs to improve in areas like documentation and UI."
"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."
"The open-source version of Kong does not support a dashboard, which would be very helpful."
"It is a young product and does not have the kind of brand recognition that would make it a more popular solution with our clients."
"We ran it for a while, but then we decided to move away from Tyk, because Tyk's cloud version, the SaaS version, has a significant limitation of limited flexibility, so you can't program very much."
"I would like to see some additional features like having some extensions for .NET core because we use it for our back-end language."
"In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly better communication with the customer base that would be my main issue with them."
"We would like a better tool for generating documentation for the APIs to be developed."
"Sometimes when new features are released, they are not immediately stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing charges...In some areas, the functionalities are available free of charge."
"It's expensive in Thailand (10 million baht, in Thai currency)."
"Kong Enterprise's pricing is at par compared to the other technologies."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"The price is really reasonable compared to that of alternative solutions."
"There are many factors that influence the price of Kong Enterprise, such as scale, licenses, and usage."
"Basically, my company uses the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have any information on licensing costs currently."
"It had a free version, which suited many of our needs, but not all, but we were happy to go ahead with the licensed version as well, which is the paid version."
"There are different versions and plans available depending on the requirements, so there is flexibility in terms of the pricing."
"The price is low compared to other products of a similar type."
"The cost curve is far smoother, both in terms of volume and the number of calls it's running on, compared to most competitors. So it's a tad more expensive at the very low end, but the curve is nothing like Apigee or some of the others."
"We are using the open-source version of this product, so there are no licensing costs for its use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
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 ...
What do you like most about Tyk?
The scalability is very good. That was a key factor in the selection, like how it could be pushed to high volume and scalability, which seemed to be very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tyk?
The pricing is actually quite competitive. In Azure environments, it gets beaten by Microsoft API Gateway, but on the other hand, it offers some features that Microsoft lacks. So it really comes do...
What needs improvement with Tyk?
In terms of our usage, the main area of concern is that they tend to build enhancements slightly ahead of the considerations for what those enhancements and extensions are. So it could be slightly ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
Trip Advisor, Juniper Networks, AT&T
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. Tyk and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.