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.

The speed is phenomenal, but the real game-changer is how the Kong Ingress Controller allows us to automate our entire routing configuration through kubernetes native resources and GitOps best practices. Using the OIDC and Rate Limiting plugins saved us weeks of custom development, instantly securing our services with zero performance hit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The shift away from a fully supported Open Source (OSS) model is disappointing, as it forces teams to move toward the Enterprise/Konnect licensing much earlier than expected to maintain security and stability. This transition adds significant overhead for smaller projects and complicates our long-term roadmap when balancing cost against the need for basic production-grade features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like most about Kong Gateway is its high performance and scalability, which make it a strong fit for managing APIs in production environments. It also has a rich plugin ecosystem for authentication, rate limiting, logging, and security, so I can customize behavior easily without heavy coding. The setup feels straightforward, and its support for a microservices architecture helps streamline overall API management. On top of that, the flexibility to deploy either on-premise or in cloud environments makes it versatile for a wide range of use cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One downside of Kong Gateway is that the initial setup and configuration can feel complex, especially for beginners. You really need a solid understanding of plugins, routing, and the different deployment modes to get everything working smoothly. In addition, some advanced features are only available in the enterprise version, which can drive up costs. Debugging and troubleshooting can also be challenging at times, particularly when visibility is limited unless you have the right monitoring set up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What stands out most is the flexibility and control it gives us over our API traffic. The plugin-based architecture has been especially useful: we can apply authentication, rate limiting, and logging in a consistent way without having to build everything ourselves. It also integrates smoothly into our existing stack and supports both cloud and on-prem setups, which matters for us given our regulatory and data constraints. Performance has been solid under load as well, and that reliability is critical for our use cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The biggest challenge for me is the initial setup and the ongoing maintenance. It isn’t always straightforward, especially for teams that aren’t deeply familiar with API gateway concepts. When configuration issues come up, debugging can take a while, and although the documentation is extensive, it can feel a bit fragmented when you’re working through more advanced scenarios. I also get the sense that some enterprise features are more necessary than optional, which can affect cost considerations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Its lightweight architecture and high performance API Gateway is best for industries like us (Banking). We use for our API management, considering risks in banking we need a secure system to connect to API's for which we use KONG Gateway. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is good, but needs full expertise to unlock full potential. Initial set up, configuration might feel complex if you have no prior experience. Additionally to unlock some advanced capabilities require license. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I started working with Kong about six months ago as a beginner. What I appreciate most about Kong is that the features they release are well thought‑out and come ready for use. Most capabilities can be easily performed through the UI, CLI, or Admin API, which makes automation straightforward and flexible. Kong also supports a wide range of architectures, from legacy setups to modern, cloud‑native designs. Their development process is strong, user feedback is actively considered, enhancements are delivered quickly, and the overall support experience has been very good. This has made learning and working with the platform much easier and more effective.

The introduction of AI Gateway capabilities further positions Kong ahead of the market, making it a future‑ready platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One area where I see room for improvement is that some capabilities which were previously available—and are still relevant and commonly expected in the API gateway space—have been deprecated or are no longer supported. For example, earlier versions allowed API products to be created with the same name, which enabled a single‑organization model while differentiating environments such as Production and Non‑Production, and publishing them to their respective developer portals.

With the v3 Developer Portal, this is no longer supported, as API products must have globally unique names. This results in a less optimal user experience or requires maintaining separate organizations for Production and Non‑Production, which in turn increases operational and maintenance overhead. It would be valuable to revisit this capability to better support common enterprise environment‑segregation use cases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kong Gateway stands out for its high performance and scalability, handling large volumes of API traffic with low latency.

Its flexible plugin architecture also makes it easy to extend functionality for security, monitoring, and authentication. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The learning curve can be steep, especially when dealing with advanced configurations and plugins.

It can also become complex to manage at scale without strong operational practices and tooling in place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Earlier we were using Kong enterprise and recently we migrated to Kong Konnect, the Konnect is absolutely a good enhancement that we wanted because UI is simple to check DP & CP, i can check all created Gateway's including how many servers are present in the DP. Integration with organization SSO is very seamless without any issues. Also there are plenty of new features for future enhancement like AI gateway and LLM connection. We have deployed CP in our on-prem and performance quite good and it was in ms only by using validations and authentication plugins. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are not major downsides, if we get a screen to deploy custom plugins or build custom plugins then that will be very helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kong Gateway's new features focus on enhancing its AI Gateway capabilities and improving overall performance and security. There are rumours that Kong is promoting the Gateway to General Availability and introducing semantic intelligence for accelerated GenAI performance and LLM security. That would be awesome! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Possibly think on ways where its usage can be cheaper or easier to adopt by SMB. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.