Kong Gateway Reviews & Product Details

I really like how lightweight Kong Gateway is. It doesn't hog your system resources at all, which is a huge plus. Even if you're working on a laptop or a machine that's not super powerful, Kong runs just fine without slowing things down. You don't need some beefy server setup to get it going, which makes life a lot easier when you're just trying to get work done. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overall, Kong Gateway is pretty solid, but the documentation could use some work. When I was getting started, I found the initial setup instructions a bit confusing. It would be awesome if they had more beginner-friendly tutorials or step-by-step guides that walk you through the basics. Maybe some video walkthroughs or real-world examples would help new users get up and running faster without having to dig through forums or Stack Overflow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that Kong Gateway is incredibly flexible and scales really well, it just handles massive amounts of API traffic without breaking a sweat. The plugin system is a huge plus for me, since it lets me add features like authentication, rate limiting, or monitoring without doing a lot of extra work, and I’ve found the hybrid deployment options super handy when bridging older systems with new cloud apps. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I dislike is that getting started can be rough, especially if you’re new to API gateways; the documentation sometimes leaves you hanging and figuring things out can be frustrating. I also wish more advanced features were available in the open source version, since some really useful stuff is locked behind the enterprise paywall, and the developer portal feels a bit undercooked compared to others I’ve tried Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

High performance and scalability, even under heavy traffic.

Flexible plugin architecture that allows easy customization and extension.

Strong security features, including authentication, rate limiting, and traffic control.

Native service mesh compatibility, enabling seamless integration with modern architectures.

Wide range of built-in and community plugins that simplify data transformation and API operations.

Simple setup and user-friendly configuration, making onboarding and deployment very smooth. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

More detailed and example-rich documentation to help developers understand advanced configurations and edge cases.

Improved debugging and troubleshooting tools, especially around plugin errors, request tracing, and performance bottlenecks.

Enhanced UI visibility in Kong Manager for monitoring, logs, and analytics.

Simplified configuration for complex deployments, such as hybrid mode or multi-cluster setups Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like best about Kong Gateway is its flexibility and scalability. It handles high traffic loads efficiently, provides strong security features like authentication and rate-limiting, and integrates seamlessly with monitoring tools like Prometheus. Its hybrid deployment model makes it easy to manage both DC and DR environments, and the plugin ecosystem allows for quick customization without heavy coding. Overall, it’s reliable, developer-friendly, and simplifies API operations at scale. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

With Kong Gateway Enterprise, the overall experience is excellent. The only area I would point out is that certain advanced configurations can feel complex at first, and some features require deeper expertise to fully leverage. Also, upgrades and version compatibility sometimes need careful planning. That said, the strong documentation, enterprise support, and stability make these challenges much easier to handle Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In 2025, Kong has releasae lots of new features in Kong Konnect like in AI Gateway it has release Automated RAG Pipelines , PII Sanitization plugins and also enhance Enhanced security and reliability.

Kong also release a debug tracing where we can see the live tracing, which is really good and too fast compare to other APIM.

Kong has also release Kong Event Gateway which is tailored for event-driven architecture which extends Kong's reach beyound synchronous REST.gRPC APIs to tackle streaming and event-based workflow Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I want Kong Gateway to also work as an Identity Provider (IDP) so it can create and manage tokens on its own, instead of depending on third-party platforms like Okta, Auth0, and others.

Kong Gateway Operator 1.5 is powerful, but CRDs can be verbose, and debugging misconfigurations still requires YAML diving. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

With kong support, I have done changes for declarative configuration using YAML and it's integration with CI / CD pipelines which significantly reduced the manual intervention. It helped to accelerate the speed of testing and debugging. I would also like to appreciate the improved developer portal, interactive docs and finally the testing tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The plugin configuration and debugging can be better since for the new users it is but complicated. But I found the setup is strong and ux can be improved and should be more developer friendly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I’m glad to see that this is a robust and well-established choice for API management. Its impressive performance and scalability make it highly efficient, and I particularly value the plugin architecture, which makes it simple to add new features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One persistent issue is that error messages from the proxy or plugin layer are often not sufficiently explicit. This lack of clarity can make it more challenging to debug and determine the underlying cause of a configuration failure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kong Gateway is highly performant and cloud-native by design, which makes it an excellent fit for modern microservices and Kubernetes-based environments. I really appreciate its flexibility with plugins for security, observability, and traffic management—especially features like authentication, rate limiting, and service mesh integration. The developer experience is smooth, and the open-source foundation combined with enterprise-grade support ensures scalability and reliability. Its lightweight footprint and API-first approach make it easy to integrate into CI/CD pipelines while maintaining strong security practices. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The documentation can sometimes be fragmented, making it difficult to find detailed, end-to-end configuration examples for more complex use cases. The learning curve is a bit steep for teams new to API gateways, and some advanced plugins require enterprise licensing, which may not always be budget-friendly for smaller organizations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

1.Decentralized & High-Performance Architecture

2.Service Mesh Support (Kuma/Envoy Integration)

3.Powerful Declarative Configuration (GitOps-Friendly) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Although Kong has many plugins, some community plugins lack maintenance, updates, and version compatibility.

A more standardized, validated plugin ecosystem would help developers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

after my previous response, I can see various plugins such as PII sanitization and Automated RAG injector as welll as trace tool for debugging is also very helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kong is not acting as an IDP server, we are not able to generate tokens from kong itself, we have to use third party IDP servers as okta, oauth 0 etc, so it will be good if we can get this functionality in kong itself, so it can compete with other API gateways like Apigee. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.