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Kong Gateway Enterprise vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
7.6
Kong Gateway Enterprise offers scalability, advanced features, and reduces detection time, supporting efficient API delivery with economic benefits.
Sentiment score
7.6
WSO2 API Manager offers high ROI with cost efficiency, operational improvements, and valuable support, though perceptions may vary.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Kong Gateway Enterprise support is helpful and responsive, but users note delays and desire quicker, more capable assistance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Customer service varies with subscription level, with helpful responses often, while open-source users rely on forums and documentation.
The technical support from Kong Gateway Enterprise would be rated about eight, as we missed local technical support.
The support is good, with well-defined documentation and helpful blogs.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Kong Gateway Enterprise is praised for scalability across applications, but smaller entities face challenges due to resource constraints.
Sentiment score
7.5
WSO2 API Manager is scalable, supporting container deployments, horizontal and vertical scaling, but involves manual provisioning challenges.
The scalability of this solution would be rated about eight or nine.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Kong Gateway Enterprise is stable with few issues, excellent architecture, and recommended strong configuration for optimal performance and versatility.
Sentiment score
7.3
WSO2 API Manager is stable with minor issues, quick bug fixes, and high ratings, benefiting from Tomcat's foundation.
The system is stable for our low-concurrency use cases.
 

Room For Improvement

Kong Gateway Enterprise needs better pricing, integrations, API management, documentation, customization, support, and AI features for improved user experience.
WSO2 API Manager requires UI improvements, better documentation, competitive pricing, enhanced support, and solutions for stability, performance, and integration issues.
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.
Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions.
 

Setup Cost

Kong Gateway Enterprise pricing is competitive, especially compared to Apigee, with value dependent on organizational needs and region.
WSO2 API Manager offers an open-source version and a subscription model, with costs varying based on features and usage.
 

Valuable Features

Kong Gateway Enterprise provides scalable, secure API management with integration support, high performance, and adaptability via open-source community backing.
WSO2 API Manager provides robust security, flexibility, scalability, and powerful integration with user-friendly features for seamless API management.
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.
The product's capabilities for integrating with REST APIs are valuable.
 

Categories and Ranking

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
WSO2 API Manager
Ranking in API Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Gateway Enterprise is 6.7%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.9%, up from 4.1% 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.
VishalSingh14 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy APIs and easy to manage CORS configuration
I have used WSO2 Store and WSO2 API Manager at the architecture level. I worked on two versions, namely WSO2 API Manager 2.6.0 and 5.7.0. I have also worked with WSO2 Identity Server versions 5.7 and 5.11. There are certain things that Apigee handles better than WSO2 API Manager. The user interface of WSO2 API Manager is much easier than that of Apigee. The scope of flexibility was much greater in Apigee. In WSO2 API Manager, we had little flexibility and were restricted to a specific software or tool. On the other hand, we had the scope of customization in Apigee.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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 do you like most about WSO2 API Manager?
It is possible to scale up and scale down with the solution...I can say that I have not seen any issues related to scalability.
What needs improvement with WSO2 API Manager?
We have encountered some concerns with concurrency. Our integrations do not handle high-volume transactions, and when benchmarking, some issues arose with concurrent testing. It is uncertain whethe...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 API Manager?
We use WSO2 API Manager ( /products/wso2-api-manager-reviews ) to integrate our telecom products with third-party REST APIs. We are orchestrating services where our business process defines the int...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargill, Zillow, Ferrari, WeWork, Healthcare.gov, Yahoo! Japan, Giphy, SkyScanner
1. eBay 2. StubHub 3. Cisco 4. Verizon 5. T-Mobile 6. Vodafone 7. Orange 8. BT Group 9. Telstra 10. Deutsche Telekom 11. Swisscom 12. AT&T 13. Sprint 14. Telefonica 15. O2 16. British Airways 17. Lufthansa 18. Emirates 19. Qatar Airways 20. Etihad Airways 21. Air France 22. KLM 23. American Express 24. Visa 25. Mastercard 26. PayPal 27. Western Union 28. Citibank 29. HSBC 30. Barclays 31. Santander 32. Goldman Sachs
Find out what your peers are saying about Kong Gateway Enterprise vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.