The biggest benefit for me is the reduced API latency, which is especially useful when handling millions of requests per day. It also supports both REST and GraphQL. Overall, the standout feature is its performance. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest con, in my opinion, is the high licensing cost. For a small organization with a small team, this can easily become one of the largest expenses. Also, if the team doesn’t have prior gateway experience, it can be difficult for them to get hands-on and get up to speed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A fast-to-deploy API gateway that you can get up and running in a minute with Docker, plus a lot of plugins. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Memory & Performance Overhead

Wait, isn't Kong famous for being fast? Yes, but there’s a catch:

Plugin Bloat: Every plugin you enable adds a small amount of latency. If you stack 15+ plugins (Auth, Logging, Rate Limiting, Transformer, etc.) on a single route, you will see your P99 latency start to creep up.

Resource Usage: Because it runs on Nginx, it’s highly efficient, but if you're running it in a "sidecar" pattern in Kubernetes for every single microservice, the cumulative memory footprint can become significant compared to lighter alternatives like Envoy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I use Kong Gateway for streamlining microservices and better visibility. I appreciate that it offers insight into all my microservices on a single platform. I like its versatility and how it can handle a huge number of transactions per second (TPS) without needing equivalent infrastructure. Kong Gateway offers almost 50K TPS per node, which is impressive in its segment, and it's cost-effective. My team switched from APIGEE to Kong Gateway for some parts of our business due to its cost efficiency and 100% operational efficiency without the risk of vendor lock-in. The initial setup is pretty easy, especially with the new Kong Docs Portal. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

From my hands-on experience, Kong Gateway can feel a bit too DevOps centric for teams that would rather have more guided management through a rich GUI(KONG Manager type), since so much of the control is handled through configuration and APIs.

If you run it in DB mode, you also need to plan carefully for PostgreSQL operations and failover as part of the overall gateway design. And although Lua plugins are powerful, it’s not always easy on real projects to find people who are comfortable extending Kong at that level. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

High performance – Built on NGINX/OpenResty, handles heavy API traffic with low latency

Plugin-based architecture – Easily add features like auth, rate limiting, logging

Scalable – Suitable for microservices and large distributed systems

Cloud-native friendly – Works well with Kubernetes and containerized environments

Strong security features – Supports OAuth2, JWT, key authentication, etc.

Centralized management – Control APIs from a single platform

Flexible deployment – Can be deployed on-prem, cloud, or hybrid

Active community & support – Good documentation and ecosystem Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Advanced features are paid – Many enterprise capabilities (analytics, RBAC, dev portal) require paid versions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Its reliability in keeping our APIs available is excellent, and it comes with robust API management tools. It also offers a solid mechanism for API protection, and the tracking tool is genuinely useful for monitoring what’s happening. I especially appreciate its developer management features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Report generation could be improved, and the documentation needs to be more detailed. The user interface could be simplified, and it doesn’t feel well synchronized with the development tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the Popular opensource API Gateways which help us to manage APIs deployed anywhere from a simple infra to complex multi cloud environment.

As per my obeservation Kong is capable to handle different protocols like REST, GRPC, Graphql which enables us to manage almost all of our APIs needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Need improvement on AI features and plugins in Kong Gateway is limited, impacting overall functionality and performance.

There is lack of analytics and monitoring in Kong Gateway, hindering effective performance tracking. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It’s fast, reliable, and doesn’t add unnecessary complexity when managing APIs at scale. Setting things up is straightforward, and the plugin system makes it easy to add features like security, traffic control, or monitoring without rewriting everything. It also plays really well with modern setups like Kubernetes, which saves a lot of time when deploying or scaling services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

feel a bit heavy and complex once you move beyond basic use cases. The learning curve gets steeper when dealing with advanced configurations, custom plugins, or debugging issues, especially for teams new to API gateways. The admin and observability experience can also feel fragmented unless you invest time and effort into tuning it or upgrading to enterprise features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like the UI dashboard of Kong Gateway. Its performance and speed are impressive, using an ultra-lightweight NGINX engine that can handle up to 50,000 transactions per second, which I find really good. I also appreciate its deployment flexibility, whether it's on-premise, in the cloud, or using the Kong Ingress Controller for Kubernetes. The platform is architecture-dependent with lots of options, and I find it really good for my needs. Additionally, it supports managing gateways via YAML and Kubernetes CRDs, which seamlessly integrates into GitOps and CI/CD pipelines. Setting it up was very easy; I was able to do it within an hour and start working on it right away. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I think the documentation could be a bit simpler and should include more examples. There's also an enterprise wall, and while the open source resources are good, the paid product is also there, which can be a bit of a barrier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really appreciate Kong Gateway's plugin-based architecture and flexibility. It allows us to centralize security and traffic management while keeping services simple, which scales well in cloud-native environments. The architecture helps us to centralize cross-cutting concerns like authentication, rate limiting, and observability, significantly reducing duplication and keeping services focused on business logic. From a platform perspective, it improves consistency and makes it easier to enforce policies across all APIs without touching individual services. Its flexibility also helps us respond quickly to changing requirements by updating configurations at the gateway level instead of redeploying services, leading to better scalability, faster iteration, and a more maintainable system overall. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the learning curve can be steep, especially for teams new to API gateways. Configuration complexity increases as the number of services grows. Debugging issues across plugins and routing rules can sometimes be non-trivial. The initial setup had a steep learning curve due to the Lua-based architecture and our plugins were in Go language, which was not supported out of the box. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Konnect simplifies the entire lifecycle—from designing and securing APIs to monitoring performance and scaling—without adding unnecessary complexity. Its cloud-hosted control plane removes a lot of operational overhead, while still giving full flexibility to deploy gateways anywhere: on-premise, cloud, Kubernetes, or hybrid environments.

Overall, it helps teams move faster, maintain better control, and deliver reliable APIs with far less effort. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I dislike about Kong Konnect is that some parts of the platform can feel a bit complex when you first start using it, especially for teams that are new to API gateways or Kubernetes. The documentation is extensive, but sometimes you need to piece together information from multiple places to get a complete picture. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.