--- title: Kong Konnect Reviews meta_title: 'Kong Konnect Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 322 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Kong Konnect works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 322 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-26' parent_category: name: Development url: https://www.g2.com/categories/development --- # Kong Konnect Reviews **Vendor:** Kong Inc **Category:** [API Management Tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/api-management) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 322 ## About Kong Konnect Kong is an AI and API connectivity platform designed to help platform engineering teams, DevOps organizations, and enterprise architects deploy, secure, observe, and govern API traffic across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. Built on open-source foundations, Kong facilitates the management of the entire lifecycle of APIs and AI traffic at scale, encompassing everything from development and deployment to runtime policy enforcement and observability. Targeted primarily at mid-market and enterprise organizations with complex distributed architectures, Kong is particularly beneficial for those utilizing microservices, multi-cloud deployments, and AI-powered applications. The platform caters to a diverse audience, including platform engineers, API program managers, security architects, and development teams that require consistent and governed API access across both internal and external systems. By addressing the challenges of API sprawl, inconsistent security enforcement, and observability gaps, Kong provides a robust solution for organizations navigating the complexities of modern infrastructure. Kong's capabilities are extensive and designed to tackle several recurring infrastructure challenges. The platform's API Gateway and Lifecycle Management features enable efficient routing, load balancing, authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and transformation for various API types, including REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and event-based APIs. Additionally, with the rise of generative AI, Kong has developed an AI Gateway specifically for managing traffic to large language models (LLMs) and AI agents. This includes functionalities such as prompt and response management, semantic caching, and token-based rate limiting, ensuring that organizations can effectively govern their AI workloads. Another significant feature of Kong is its Service Mesh, which provides east-west traffic management between services within a cluster or across clusters. This includes support for mutual TLS (mTLS), traffic policies, and observability at the service level, enhancing security and monitoring capabilities. The Konnect SaaS Control Plane further streamlines the management of Kong deployments globally, offering centralized analytics, developer portal capabilities, and API catalog management. Kong's extensibility is another key differentiator, featuring a plugin architecture with over 100 pre-built integrations that cover a wide range of functionalities, including logging, authentication providers, observability backends, and AI providers. Available as open-source software, an enterprise distribution, or a fully managed SaaS offering, Kong integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes and supports deployment on major cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP. This flexibility allows organizations to leverage Kong across heterogeneous environments without necessitating a complete infrastructure overhaul. ## Kong Konnect Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find the **ease of use** in Kong Konnect exceptional, thanks to its thorough documentation and configuration tools. (57 reviews) - Users commend Kong Konnect for its **robust security features** , ensuring reliable protection for their APIs and microservices. (44 reviews) - Users value the **unmatched extensibility via plugins** in Kong Konnect, enabling complete control over API traffic. (42 reviews) - Users appreciate the **scalability** of Kong Konnect, easily managing APIs and maintaining performance across environments. (42 reviews) - Users value the **ease of integration and robust features** of Kong Konnect, enhancing customization and functionality. (41 reviews) - Flexibility (35 reviews) - Users value the **high performance and versatility** of Kong Gateway, praising its support for modern architectures. (31 reviews) - Speed (31 reviews) - Performance Efficiency (29 reviews) - Integrations (28 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users struggle with **poor documentation** , finding it fragmented and hard to navigate for complex use cases. (22 reviews) - Users note a **lack of AI features** and limited plugins in Kong Konnect, impacting overall functionality and experience. (21 reviews) - Users express a need for **detailed learning resources** and mention the lack of analytics and complex licensing as drawbacks. (20 reviews) - Users note the **limited features** of Kong Konnect, often facing missing functionalities that affect their overall experience. (20 reviews) - Users find the **expensive features** of Kong Konnect limiting, especially with essential tools locked behind paywalls. (16 reviews) - Users find a **steep learning curve** with Kong Konnect's advanced features, impacting ease of use and efficiency. (16 reviews) - Users face **developer portal issues** , citing immaturity and inadequate documentation hinder their overall experience with Kong Gateway. (15 reviews) - Users find the **complexity** of Kong Gateway challenging, especially with setup and insufficient documentation for beginners. (14 reviews) - Difficult Learning (14 reviews) - Difficult Configuration (10 reviews) ## Kong Konnect Reviews ### 1. Friendly and powerful solution for APIs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 29, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** What I like most about Kong Gateway is its ability to scale and manage APIs efficiently. Its plugin-based architecture allows for great flexibility and customization. Additionally, it offers easy integrations with existing systems and has an active community that facilitates the resolution of questions. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** The least useful aspect is that the learning curve can be somewhat steep for new users. The documentation, although extensive, could be clearer in some technical sections. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Thanks to Kong, we can now centralize traffic management, apply authentication, and rate limiting easily. ### 2. Best API Gateway. Very easy to use to configure and set up **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subbarao C. | Managing Director, Global Head of Cloud Native Core Banking Integration and Data; LATAM Executive, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Definitely AI gateway capability including LLMOps **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** More reference implementation samples and publish best practices and anti patterns **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy to onboard API's, including various configuration options. Excellent monitoring capabilities ### 3. Great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 18, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** It is lightweight and flexible cloud native gateway **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Nothing specific. It's a very good product. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's helping us to manage api traffic smoothly without any intervention. It also provides Analytics of the traffic. ### 4. Kong API Gateway: Love it or leave it **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Swaroop C. | Staff Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Extendibility, deployment flexibility and scalability **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** 1. Plugin limitations 2. Observability challanges **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solving api gateway, traffic management, Cross cutting problem like authentication, rate limit etc. , monitoring and tracing ### 5. Kong api gateway review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** It help us to deliver our API faster and reduce development till to half for our business **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Open source community should be allowed to provide connectors to it **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It bridge the legacy and microservices intercommunication purpose and managing single interface for the company ### 6. usage experience with kong api gateway **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Saurabh J. | Product Security Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Coming from a security engineer we can add custom logic in the form of kong gateway plugin. it's extensible to a decent scale **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** i found it difficult to implement on a personal research level. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Plugins are defined in Lua, although a popular language however it isn't widely accepted and is on declining trends. It should be revamped to languages like Pyhthon, JS, C++, Java, Go etc. ### 7. Decent Product at best : kong **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Surya G. | Associate Platform Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** All most everything. Like plugins and all **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** here comes the main thing come on to that what i dont like is that - 1. Lack of Client credential storage operation which we get in apigee and IBM connect. 2. Way worse developer portal in comparison of the other developer portals. 3. Frequent issues in syncing of Dataplane is a big concern. 4. the document should be more detailed and on point. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** There are plenty of problems that kong and konnect resolves, here are some key points - 1. providing multi environment deployment support is a must to have feature for all API gateways which kong is offering right now , for example deployment in - cloud,VMs, docker etc. 2. The request and response tranformation through kong is a point to be noted because it looks so clean and easy to do. 3.The secured connection among CRM's , data planes and control planes is a good thing too. ### 8. Product that is still in development phase **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Manan V. | Platform engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** obviously there are things that are likeable like - 1.the automation process of the deployment of entities and developer portal is great in kong konnect due to the Admin/Management API. 2.Its way easier to use in comparison of IBM connect , akana and Apigee. 3. It justifies its cost to the consumers as it is not the expensive to subscribe for. 4. The plugin stack of kong is great and still in progress of adding more plugins like with the implementation of AI. 5. The low latency for the API request is a great plus too. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** here comes the thing which are not talk about much about kong- 1. kong is yet to understand the requirements of the clients let alone the thought of implementing it, because it takes too much time (months)to solve a simple bug . 2. Delay in deliviring products like kong mesh and Api hub is a big negative for me. 3. they should tie with more CRM's to provide a better experience. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** kong as a API gateway and developer portal vendor do solves many problems of the clients like - 1. Traffic handling - It handles the incoming traffic in such a efficient way with low latency that is segment leading. 2. Monitization of the API's - It helps clients to monitize their API's through their developer portal. 3. Securing the end points - kong helps in restricting unauthorized access to the API's end points. 4. API's testing - insomnia tool of kong is such a great tool for unit testing because of the features like auto test creation and much more. ### 9. Using Kong Gateway at a Bank **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gavin S. | Site Reliability Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 02, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Upsides: Simplified API management (different country clusters) Robust security features (Introspection Plugin) Scalability and performance of DB-less mode **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Downsides: Steep learning curve for decalrative configuration as well as plugin usages Limited documentation in some areas especially releated to plugins Occasional stability issues with updates (version upgrade) **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I feel that in the context of my work, Kong API solves and improves the below key areas API Management: Simplifying the management of APIs, making it easier to control access, monitor usage, and ensure security compliance. Security Enhancement: Providing robust security features like authentication, authorization, and rate limiting, which are crucial for safeguarding sensitive banking data and transactions. Scalability: Enabling seamless scaling of API infrastructure to handle increasing loads and accommodate growth in customer interactions and transactions. Interoperability: Facilitating integration between various banking systems and applications, ensuring smooth communication and interoperability across the bank's ecosystem. Performance Optimization: Improving the performance of APIs by caching responses, reducing latency, and optimizing traffic routing, thereby enhancing the overall user experience for both customers and internal users. ### 10. Powerful and Scalable API Gateway with Great Extensibility **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 02, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Kong’s high scalability, lightweight architecture, and extensive plugin support make it an excellent choice for managing APIs efficiently. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** The learning curve can be steep for beginners, and debugging custom plugins (especially in Lua) can be challenging. The enterprise version is expensive, which might not be ideal for small teams or startups. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong API Gateway helps in securing, managing, and scaling APIs efficiently. It simplifies authentication, traffic control, and monitoring, reducing the need for custom-built solutions. The plugin-based architecture allows easy extension of functionalities, improving developer productivity and API performance. ### 11. Kong is great product for APIM & having potential to become Market Leader **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vaibhav S. | Technology Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** 1. Having mulitple security policy to secure our api 2. We can create out of box custom plugins using Lua, js, python 3. Support Hybrid model 4. Low latency 5. Easy to setup in any cloud gateway like aws,azure,gcp etc 6. Easy to integrate with third party tools like loggly, datadog , prometheus & many more 7. Konnect has recently introduced dedicated cloud gateways, which is fully managed, multi-region API management solution. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** 1. Thier documentation regarding things need to be more detailed 2. The developer portal needs to be more mature and should provide more functionality to the developer. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong provide centralize api managment , ensuring security , scalability , low latency & streamlined development, while providing analysitic for optimization, benefiting developers and business alike. It also enhances API security, performance, and management by providing robust features like rate limiting, authentication, and monitoring. ### 12. I tried kong just for testing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joan R. | IT Enginyeer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** I would say that is very easy to use with a good documentation **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** UI is functional but can feel limited and unintuitive compared to competitors like Apigee or AWS API Gateway. Improving the UX for configuring routes, plugins, and analytics would enhance usability **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Some problem with the installation ### 13. Performance and reliability **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Broadcast Media | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Platform that ensures high performance, reliability, and scalability while minimizing latency **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** The licence cost could be high in the case of a large number of systems integrated through Kong. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Migration from an old SOA Architecture, for increased scalability during traffic peaks and refactoring of critical APIs for more effective monitoring ### 14. Kong API Gateway has been used in multiple projects at work and I highly recommend **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** omar s. | Devops Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** I like that the service is very detailed and efficient. We have no had any problems at all **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** We would wish there was a way to incorporate more of our services with KONG API **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It make automating the job much easier and can help on day to day activities. ### 15. Easy to use and friendly interface **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steve L. | Cloud Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Most of API Gateway is kind of difficult to use, but this product is straight forward and easy to use. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** So far, I haven't found any dislike of this product **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Usual API interface issue but it solved all of issues ### 16. overall best Api management vendor and product and cicd solution with AI & ML. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** mahendra c. | Cloud Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Their help has been invaluable in getting our infra up and running in record time, & they are always abailble to assist us as wheen i need. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** they charge quite a bit for licenses, and their method of calculating cost based both on API calls and no. of services is quite restrictive. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** overall good for API management and AI using cicd solution and also Breadth of services Product roadmap and future vision Product functionality and performance Strong customer focus Strong services expertise etc. that way used Kong API Gateway product, also benefit organization. ### 17. Kong API Gateway Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nitish Kumar M. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Kong API Gateway has some amazing features like i) It can handle large volume of api requests very efficiently ii) It supports wide variety of plugins whihch makes it easier to implement new features iii) It is easier to implement and signup is pretty straight forward iv) It has very large documentation base which makes easier to debug issues and their customer support is also very reliable v) It is easier to integrate with different platforms and has robust security features in-built **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** It's developer portal is pretty basic and could be imporved **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong API Gateway manages our APIs in very optimized way by providing securing, monitoring traffic, reducing manual intervention. This enhances security, provides analytics, and allows our team to focus on management istead of developing custom solutions. ### 18. it was very good **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Irshad P. | Security Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Ease of Integration, Ease of Use and Number of features are very good **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** nothing much, it has all the necessary components for API gateway **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** it is very good for our API management for retrieving and updating fileds ### 19. Good gateway **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Reliable, feature rich gateway that enable shared responsibility **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Nil, pretty much do all that we asked it to **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving shared responsibility between developer ### 20. high performance and simple to use **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sandeep M. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Mostly configuring the Internal services and sometime exposing it to public **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Sometime upgrade , would cause issues with config **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Routing , Proxy and authentication & Authorization ### 21. The King of API Gateway is here **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jayesh P. | Associate Consultant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** The freedom to choose different installation methods. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** There's nothing to dislike it best among the best. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Making the complete slow efficient flexible scalable meeting our goals. ### 22. nice tool to manage lot of API **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** easy to use, nice looking , easy to integrate **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** nothing for now, quite lot of settings to fit with infrastructure **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** good monitoring ### 23. Kong discourages modern microservice architecture, outrageously priced **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 03, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Built on OpenResty, with straightforward Kubernetes resource definition of routes. The documentation was good as well, and there are free plugins and an open source variant of Kong to get you locked in before you realize the need to switch to another provider. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** They are dropping their support for Alpine-based images, and their Ubuntu base image brings about too large an attack surface. So you have to build Kong yourself, but the Enterprise Gateway product adds closed source modifications so it's impossible to get a secure build. Also, you have to go with enterprise for FIPS, which is reasonable if it wasn't prohibitively priced. They charge for every separate microservice TIMES every environment, including QA or trial environments. Basically, this makes them implicitly discourage companies from decoupling their enterprise application into separate services. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reverse proxy with path-based routing. Self-hostable without request or response size or latency restrictions. Extensible for custom logic. Controllable with Kubernetes resources. ### 24. Kong API gateway easy to implement **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Oil & Energy | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 21, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Ease of Use and Ease of Implementation and competitive price **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Support documentation can be improved for end user. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** API Management ### 25. I've used Kong for Observability and troubleshooting **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** As a part of SRE, I love its built in Monitoring and Logging. Its is easy to configure as it is a declarative configuration and automation **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** A lot of enterprise features are locked behind the Paid version **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Set up ELK Stack for monitoring traffic and debugging the API traffic flows using using Admin API, logs and tracing tools ### 26. Easy to use and robust **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rutwik B. | System Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Easy to use , many features and excellent documentation **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Pricing is bit higher compared to other products **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** API Management ### 27. API Legend **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** In my view, the standout feature of the Kong gateway is the simplicity of setting up its data planes, especially with Docker compatibility, making it user-friendly. Additionally, I love the Kong's custom plugin feature, which allows me to enhance API capabilities according to my needs. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** I believe that the Kong API gateway lacks certain features, such as monetization options in the developer portal, which could provide additional benefits for organization utilizing the portal for API sales. Additionally, I think there should be limits on the number of applications developers can create from the developer portal. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** The Kong API gateway effectively addresses several issues, including: 1. Enabling the addition of headers to my/client request payloads before forwarding them to the upstream, thanks to the request transformer plugin. 2. Safeguarding my service from DDOS attacks through rate-limiting plugins. 3. Facilitating response caching via the Response Cache plugin, thereby reducing response times. ### 28. Kong API Gateway for Integration. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** It is easy understanding and easy to implement in any kind of application and more secured **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Nothing more to complaint about Kong API Gateway, but some error message are not helpful. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automatically discovers and routes API requests to the correct services. centralize control for over all API and Reduce complexity in service to service communication. ### 29. Comprehensive Review for Kong API Gateway **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bharat W. | Seiner software engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 18, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** High Performance and Scalability Extensive Plugin Architecture Comprehensive API Management Strong Security Features Service Mesh Integration Active Community and Support **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Complexity of Advanced Features Steep Learning Curve for Custom Plugins Occasional Gaps in Documentation High Cost of Enterprise Edition Potential for Configuration Challenges **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** API Management Problem: Complex and time-consuming management of multiple APIs. Benefit: Streamlines and automates API management, reducing manual workload. Security Problem: Ensuring API security against unauthorized access and threats. Benefit: Enhances security with features like OAuth2, JWT, IP whitelisting, and data encryption. Scalability Problem: Handling high volumes of API requests without performance issues. Benefit: High-performance architecture ensures scalability and low latency. Extensibility Problem: Difficulty in customizing API functionality. Benefit: Extensive plugin architecture allows for tailored solutions and enhanced functionality. Service Mesh Integration Problem: Complex integration of APIs within microservices environments. Benefit: Seamless compatibility with service mesh architectures and container orchestration platforms. ### 30. Best Tool for Starting Out **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** DEVANSHU S. | Technical Head, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** As a computer science student and an upcoming intern, my experience with Kong API Gateway has been quite enlightening. Navigating the complexities of modern application development, particularly in the world of APIs and microservices, Kong has proven to be a robust tool that helps between theoretical knowledge and practical application. The first thing that stood out about Kong is its extensive and organized documentation. As someone new to the field, the clear examples and detailed explanations made the initial setup and configuration straightforward.Kong’s plugin architecture is particularly impressive. It allows for easy customization and enhancement of the API gateway functionalities.Kong’s compatibility with containerized environments like Kubernetes is also particularly beneficial. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** While Kong offers a free open-source version, some advanced features are only available in the paid versions. This is a limitaction for me as I cant utilise them. Also I have somtimes noticed that CPU usage also spikes abnormally when utilising Kong. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have utilised to solve routing requests quite efficiently using Kong. Furthermore it gives a decent service in term of monitoring and logging which earlier had to be configured explicitly for my application. ### 31. Setting up OSS version of the Gatway manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** João E. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** I love using the Kong API Gateway because it allows us to make secure connections and allows us to protect the different applications we use against known bad actors attacks like DDoS. It also allow us to configure in a seamless way, different consumers to allows service consumption and usage of different access points accross out cloud services. Another great advantage is that the Kong API Gateway allow us to program different applicatins that make a lot of the parameters used in different plugins configurable on demand, which means that by simply using its REST API we can configure different profile and create consumers as any user wants to define it. All in all, the Kong gateway allow us to configure different users as consumers, it allow us to configure multiple different protocol sorts and payloads, it has a very complete way of doing rerouting and port forwarding, it makes it easy to redirect requests and it is also great that we can also make different API gateways configurable via Kong KONNECT. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** I am yet to find out something that I dislike about the Kong Gateway. It is a very robust gateway that never failed. Having sais that, if I am force to say something that still feels different when interpreting logs is the usage of LUA scripts, to which not many people have experience working with, but that on its own has never been an actual issue. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Is helping us to solve for the most part, security and rerouting issues. It also allows us to configure user profiles on demand via a custom application we have created. ### 32. Load balancing features, helping distribute incoming API requests. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammed Ilyas A. | Security Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 10, 2023 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Kong's rich plugin ecosystem is often highlighted as a major strength. It offers a wide range of plugins for authentication, rate limiting, logging, security, transformations, and more. This flexibility allows you to customize and extend the functionality of your API gateway according to your specific needs. Scalability: Kong is designed to be highly scalable, making it suitable for handling a large volume of API traffic. Its architecture supports horizontal scaling, enabling you to distribute the load across multiple instances. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Limited GUI Interface: Kong primarily relies on a RESTful API for configuration. While there are community-contributed UIs, the official graphical user interface (GUI) may not be as feature-rich. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps API rate limiting ### 33. Integration of Kong API Gateway. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 03, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Working good across different environment and easy to configure in other applications and more secured. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Open-source version is lacks some advanced features. understanding the reason for the errors is less. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy to deploy in the Cloud and protect API from unauthorized access. Also low latency and load balancing. ### 34. Extensibility: This means you can easily add features like caching or transforming data. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohit C. | Software Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Kong has a modular plugin system that allows you to extend its functionality without altering the core system. This means you can add features like authentication, logging, rate limiting, and data transformation as needed, making it highly customizable. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Plugin Limitations: Some useful plugins are only available in the paid version, which might be a limitation for smaller teams or projects. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** If you’re building an application that needs to connect different services, Kong can help manage and monitor those connections. ### 35. Kong enterprise and Kong Konnect review. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** The software is very easy to implement. We use docker on a linux VM. The Kong API gateway is easily configurable for defining services and routes. We take advantage of both basic authorization and key authorization for our security needs. The API gateway is used for both production and non-production environments. We have had some needs for support. We have found that customer support is quick in responding to tickets to help us resolve the issue or question. We recently started using Konnect to control our configurations for easier data plane management. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** The one thing that we don't really like is the UI and the filtering ability. The filter feature is good. But, feel that the filter should stay in place until you change it. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** The gateway is primarily used as a security front end for routing to our services. ### 36. Robust solutions with wide array of plugins **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** What I like most about Kong is its ease of use and configuration. There are countless plugins for various use cases, including different types of authorization like OAuth2, SAML, and OIDC. Additionally, there is an admin API and a Kong Manager UI, which make it easy to view configurations for each service, route, and plugin individually. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** I find it frustrating that there isn't a clear way to view metrics like latency in Kong. Recently, we had an issue with one of our upstream services, and it would have been helpful to see Kong analytics to identify which endpoint had problems or which plugins were causing issues. Observability in Kong needs improvement. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps us to publish a diverse array of services behind a central gateway so that it appears coherent for all of our customers, both internal and external. ### 37. It's a great API gateway management product **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Easy to configure, manage, and use. It saved our development time. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** No so far. Sometimes it lacks flexibility to implement all the features we need. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It speeds up the development and management time of API gateway ### 38. Kong :Future of Api Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jay K. | Associate Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 07, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** 1.Strong Security 2.Extensive Plugin Ecosystem 3.Simplified User Interface 4.Good Performance 5.Good Scalability **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** 1.It has Performance Issues 2.Complex Debugging Tools and Techniques 3.Less Documentation available to study in depth. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1..It Provides API Traffic Control 2. Provides good security measures 3.It Provides Flexibility and Customization for API Management 4.Good Monitoring and Observability Feature 5. Proves Less costly in Compare to other tools. ### 39. Pioneering Product on Track to Become Market Leader **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Siddhant s. | Software engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 06, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** 1. Huge range of plugins which are useful. 2. Low latetency 3. Easy to setup. 4.Easy to use. 5. Easy to integrate with other platform. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** 1. Debveloper portal should be more mature. 2. Kong Documentation should be imroved and more detailed. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong API gateway helps us to manage our APIs by securing, routing and monitoring trafic which helps us to reduce manual overhead which in return helps in enhancing security, provide us with valuable analytics and allows us to focus on our development. ### 40. Kong Api Gateway **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Many plugins, fast, hybrid mode for HA, Kong Manager **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Number of API service impact pricing license **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Enhance security, handle top OWASP APi security concern ### 41. Informative session. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Easy to implement and understand for development process. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Nothing to complain about Kong API Gateway. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing backend infrastructure of the code. ### 42. fine product **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Civil Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 04, 2025 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** good security, scalability, performance, centralized management **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** typical modern subscription-based licensing **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm only evaluating for customer infrastructure. ### 43. Kong API Gateway experience so far **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Krasimir V. | DevOps Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** The way it works and how routing is easily managed by the api. I am using the Kong API Gateway as an Ingress and a stand-alone gateway in which both setups are easy to integrate either with helm, manifests, standalone or with etcd datastore. I am not using support but usually find most of the things I need in the docs or forums. The kong API and Ingress is something that I use and trust every day. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** When I started using Kong API the documentation was pretty hard to understand, I think that it was reworked and now it's a bit easier to understand. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** HA Routing and security for micro-services. ### 44. Performance and Scaleability **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aakash B. | Software Engineering, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** It can handle large number of Transactions per second which makes it suitable for high throughput requirement applications. Since it's built on nginx it can be disturbed achieving horizontal scaling is very easy. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Even though it's powerful, Kong can be complex for initial setup specially for users who lack infra knowledge or API gateways knowledge **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** In IDFC our infra is baed on Mule where gateway is embeded with runtime. So, IDFC is paying high price even for proxy which doesn't require emebeded runtime. Having kong saves cost for the company and also avoid single point of failue if any of the Dependable Mule Service goes down. ### 45. The versatility of Kong Gateway **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rafael R. | Project Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Kong Gateway is compatible with most APIs created by vendors with the use of MTLS. It ensures safety of data while allowing the consistent flow of connectivity between servers. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** As of the moment, nothing to mention on this part as Kong API is working for us perfectly. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong Gateway allows MTLS to be dependable by ensuring that data entries are compatible with our server features. ### 46. Developing a Product and Positioning It as a Future Market Leader **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anshul A. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** - High performance and scalability - Modular plugin architecture - Robust security features - Compatibility with service mesh - Extensive plugin ecosystem for data transformation - User-friendly setup and operation **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Debugging and Troubleshooting Kong Common Issues and Solutions Debugging Tools and Techniques Performance Issues Community and Support **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** - API Traffic Control - Security Measures - Flexibility and Customization - Monitoring and Observability ### 47. Kong API Gateway Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** Ease in Handling large volumes of API requests, simple implementation and customer support **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** There is a scope to add custom feature where we can contribute or take advantage of the same, which can be done as per the need of the developer. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** From the project perspective, it helped in management of APIs with security measures and traffic monitoring. ### 48. Create product and potential future market leader **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhishek G. | Software engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** 1. Low latency 2. Lots of plugins which is useful 3. Ease of use and setup **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Kong documentation needs to be more detailed and their developer portal needs to be more mature **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong api gateway efficiently managed our apis by routing, securing and monitoring traffic, reducing manual overhead This enhances security provides valuable analytics and allow our team to focus on development ### 49. Create Product and potential future market leader **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Surbhi S. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 06, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** 1. Low Latest 2. Lots of plugins which is useful 3. Ease of use and setup **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** Kong Documentation needs to be more detailed and their Developer portal needs to be more mature. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It efficiently manages our APIs by routing, securing, and monitoring traffic, reducing manual overhead. This enhances security, provides valuable analytics, and allows our team to focus on development. ### 50. Kong Pros and Cons **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gokul A. | Associate software engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2024 **What do you like best about Kong Konnect?** The nicest things about Kong API Gateway, in my opinion, are its excellent performance and extensibility via a robust community of plugins. **What do you dislike about Kong Konnect?** The Kong API Gateway's management and configuration can get complicated for large-scale deployments, which is what I find objectionable. **What problems is Kong Konnect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Kong API Gateway is a scalable, high-performance platform that streamlines and protects API operations, thereby resolving issues with load balancing, authentication, rate limitation, logging, and monitoring. Users gain from this because it makes their APIs more dependable, secure, and performant, lowers operational complexity, and makes integration and expansion simpler. ## Kong Konnect Discussions - [What is the use of Kong API gateway?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-use-of-kong-api-gateway) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What does KONG software do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-does-kong-software-do) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [What is Kong API management?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-kong-api-management) - 1 comment - [Is Kong Devops tool?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-kong-devops-tool) - 6 comments - [View Kong Konnect pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/kong-inc-kong-konnect/reviews?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-29+07%3A01%3A12+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=9443184b-c92d-43d7-a076-91e63feaf1cd&secure%5Btoken%5D=c42866dec062625c5cfbfb253859e8ae50b95ff7217f3aef4988b0949cd29c58&format=llm_user) ## Kong Konnect Integrations - [Active Directory Reporting Tool](https://www.g2.com/products/active-directory-reporting-tool/reviews) - [Amdocs CES](https://www.g2.com/products/amdocs-ces/reviews) - [Apache Kafka](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-kafka/reviews) - [AppSentinels](https://www.g2.com/products/appsentinels/reviews) - [AWS Elastic Load Balancing](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-elastic-load-balancing/reviews) - [AWS Lambda](https://www.g2.com/products/aws-lambda/reviews) - [Datadog](https://www.g2.com/products/datadog/reviews) - [Dynatrace](https://www.g2.com/products/dynatrace/reviews) - [Elasticsearch](https://www.g2.com/products/elastic-elasticsearch/reviews) - [Elastic Stack](https://www.g2.com/products/elastic-stack/reviews) - [ELK Kubernetes Container Solution Stack](https://www.g2.com/products/elk-kubernetes-container-solution-stack/reviews) - [Grafana Labs](https://www.g2.com/products/grafana-labs/reviews) - [Keycloak on CentOS Stream 8 by Neodoo](https://www.g2.com/products/keycloak-on-centos-stream-8-by-neodoo/reviews) - [Kubernetes](https://www.g2.com/products/kubernetes/reviews) - [Logz.io](https://www.g2.com/products/logz-io/reviews) - [MuleSoft Anypoint Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/mulesoft-anypoint-platform/reviews) - [Noname Security](https://www.g2.com/products/noname-security/reviews) - [Okta](https://www.g2.com/products/okta/reviews) - [Prometheus](https://www.g2.com/products/prometheus/reviews) - [Redis Cloud](https://www.g2.com/products/redis-cloud/reviews) - [Redis Software](https://www.g2.com/products/redis-software/reviews) - [SailPoint](https://www.g2.com/products/sailpoint/reviews) - [Salt Security](https://www.g2.com/products/salt-security/reviews) - [Splunk AppDynamics](https://www.g2.com/products/splunk-appdynamics/reviews) - [Splunk Enterprise](https://www.g2.com/products/splunk-enterprise/reviews) - [Traceable AI](https://www.g2.com/products/traceable-ai/reviews) ## Kong Konnect Features **Development** - API Testing - Data Security - Orchestration - Scalability **Functionality** - Supported Protocols - Container Orchestration - Extensibility - Monitoring **Customization** - SEO - API Contracts - Change Management **Prompt Engineering - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps) ** - Prompt Optimization Tools - Template Library **Inference Optimization - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Batch Processing Support **Development - API Platforms** - API Testing - Scalability - Orchestration - Data Security **Traffic Management & Performance - AI Gateways** - Token-Aware Rate Limiting - Semantic Caching - Multi-Model Routing & Fallbacks **Cloud Visibility** - Data Discovery - Cloud Registry - Cloud Gap Analytics **API Construction** - API Testing - Data Security - Orchestration - Scalability **Collaboration** - Design Management - Access Control - Visibility **Networking** - Networking - Load Balancing - Traffic Filtering - Service Discovery **Organization** - Respository - Third-Party Integration - Access Management **Model Garden - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Model Comparison Dashboard **Collaboration - API Platforms** - Visibility - Access Control - Design Management **Governance & Observability - AI Gateways** - Data Privacy - Cost Tracking - Centralized API Key Security **Security** - Data Security - Data loss Prevention - Security Auditing **API Management** - Traffic Control - Logs/Documentation - API Monitoring - Monetization - Gateway **Protection** - Policy Management - Secure Communications **Custom Training - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Fine-Tuning Interface **API Management - API Platforms** - API Monitoring - Traffic Control - Gateway - Logs/Documentation - Monetization **Identity** - SSO - Governance - User Analytics **Data Integration** - App Integration - Data Transformation - Plugins **Application Development - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps) ** - SDK & API Integrations **Model Deployment - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps) ** - One-Click Deployment - Scalability Management **Guardrails - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Content Moderation Rules - Policy Compliance Checker **Model Monitoring - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Drift Detection Alerts - Real-Time Performance Metrics **Security - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Data Encryption Tools - Access Control Management **Gateways & Routers - Large Language Model Operationalization (LLMOps)** - Request Routing Optimization ## Top Kong Konnect Alternatives - [MuleSoft Anypoint Platform](https://www.g2.com/products/mulesoft-anypoint-platform/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (657 reviews) - [Swagger Studio](https://www.g2.com/products/swagger-studio/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (185 reviews) - [Postman](https://www.g2.com/products/postman/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (1,753 reviews)