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Kong Konnect vs WSO2 API Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 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 Konnect
Ranking in API Management
22nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (71st)
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 January 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Kong Konnect is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WSO2 API Manager is 4.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
WSO2 API Manager4.2%
Kong Konnect1.0%
Other94.8%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

SA
Senior Software Engineer at Netenrich
Significant email security benefits combined with efficient spam filtering, yet cost hinders long-term use
The integration with our on-prem Exchange was very straightforward; the only thing we did was redirect all email traffic over Proofpoint, so Proofpoint did everything independently, and we were very happy. I am still receiving emails from Proofpoint's site. Not using it at the moment, but in the short term we will be tackling that portion of the product as well. We cannot provide feedback regarding Dynamics because we are not experienced enough at the moment; we have initiatives going on but did not get enough feedback from end users. Based on my overall experience with Proofpoint, considering the cost perspective, I would rate it a 7 out of 10.
AnilKumar40 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Principal Architect at 6d Technologies
Effortless integration with REST APIs enhances business process management
The product's capabilities for integrating with REST APIs are valuable. We use API key-based security integration, where API keys are exchanged between the REST APIs. This ensures security. In the future, we might also use OAuth-based integration. Internally, the business process manager allows us to define the process and integrate with it. Additionally, the capability to define processes and seamless integration with APIs enhances our operations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kong Konnect has positively impacted my organization by making our development easier and helping us push new routes to our current customers."
"Technical support from Proofpoint was absolutely excellent."
"The documentation is excellent, and it includes a developer portal, which helps create a common distribution channel for APIs within and outside the enterprise."
"Their tech support is excellent; when I raise an incident or a support ticket, it gets answered in four hours."
"Kong Konnect has positively impacted our organization by securing our APIs, which is one of the main concerns for us, and securing our APIs has benefited our organization by improving compliance and reducing incidents."
"It is a scalable solution because it can be scaled horizontally and vertically."
"As far as I am aware this solution is the first API Publisher that allows you to create and publish API and to manage the API lifecycle."
"Yes WSO2 API Manager is scalable"
"WSO2 is very stable."
"Functionality-wise, I like WSO2 API Manager - Publisher API and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus."
"WSO2 API Manager provides OAuth2 token capabilities that our customers use to interact, onboard new customers, and provide approvals whenever a customer is onboarded."
"The solution is open-source."
"Helped us to quickly publish our Microservice APIs and enforcing different policies against them, it comes up with features like Security, Throttling policy and it provides complete access to customize API's which actually saves development effort and time."
 

Cons

"Kong Konnect's RBAC needs to evolve more, as they currently offer only one or two levels of RBAC in terms of organization and teams."
"Pricing was the issue as it becomes very expensive due to the nature of local circumstances."
"Kong Konnect needs improvement in the UI."
"I wish Kong Konnect could improve by having a built-in notification system whenever any APIs get pinged so that we can receive alerts and send them to the developer."
"When comparing documentation, Kong's documentation is not on par with Google, Amazon, or other cloud providers."
"WSO2 API Manager can be improved a lot relating to usability"
"I think they could greatly improve the general UX with their solutions."
"The stability is pretty good, but it could be improved."
"They don't have different URLs for administrators."
"I would improve the product documentation. There are some gaps, and it can be difficult to find the proper documentation for the product if you need to solve something."
"The professional support and licensing aspects of WSO have been a challenge."
"WSO2 API Manager could improve by adding external API security features, which is one area where there is room for enhancement. Internally, API security is strong, and all other necessary features are already available. It has a solid marketplace, supports both Docker and standalone setups, and offers great enterprise integration. The developer portal has greatly improved the user experience, making it simple and user-friendly wherever we’ve implemented it. Overall, it’s not as complicated as other API gateways."
"Basically, mTLS is a certificate-based communication protocol that WSO2 API Manager doesn't support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We use the open-source version — the free version."
"We use the open-source version of WSO2 API Manager, there is no cost."
"There is a subscription-based pricing structure and also the open-sourced version available."
"For our projects, we found the pricing to be a little high."
"I am using the free version."
"The solution costs less than 20,000 euros a year. I'm not sure of the exact number."
"As far as I'm aware, the costs are not minimal but satisfactory."
"WSO2 API Manager is quite an expensive tool. I rate the product's pricing a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is low and ten is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kong Konnect?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that licensing is a bit high in comparison.
What needs improvement with Kong Konnect?
I wish Kong Konnect could improve by having a built-in notification system whenever any APIs get pinged so that we can receive alerts and send them to the developer.
What is your primary use case for Kong Konnect?
I use Kong Konnect most often as a current gateway. A specific example of how I use Kong Konnect as a current gateway involves onboarding microservices into Kong Konnect where we pass the host map ...
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

Information Not Available
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 Konnect vs. WSO2 API Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.