Kong Gatewayvs
Tyk
Tyk: Another open-source API gateway with flat-rate and usage-based pricing tiers.
Kong Gateway
Open-source and cloud API gateway for managing microservices traffic
As of 29 August 2026, Kong Gateway is free to use. An API gateway for routing, securing, and monitoring traffic to microservices, available open-source or via Kong Konnect. Softwr lists it under APIs. Kong Gateway is made by Kong Inc., launched in 2017, available on Web, Linux, API.
Overview
What Kong Gateway does
Kong Gateway is an API gateway used to route, secure, and observe traffic between clients and backend microservices. It is available as a free open-source gateway and as part of Kong Konnect, a managed cloud platform that adds developer portals, an AI gateway, analytics, and enterprise support. Kong supports plugins for authentication, rate limiting, transformation, and logging across hybrid, dedicated cloud, and self-managed deployments.
What people use it for
- Routing and securing traffic across microservices
- Publishing internal or external developer portals
- Managing rate limits and authentication at the API edge
- Gateway-level routing to multiple LLM providers
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Kong Gateway.
- The free open-source gateway lacks the analytics, portals, and support of the paid Konnect tiers.
- Plus tier caps API requests at 1M/month before incurring per-million overage charges.
- Enterprise pricing is custom and not published, making budgeting harder without sales contact.
- Configuration and plugin management can require significant operational expertise to run at scale.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Kong Gateway
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Kong GatewayvsTreblle
Treblle: Focused on API observability and governance rather than gateway routing itself.
Pricing
What Kong Gateway costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free Trial
Free
- 30-day enterprise functionality trial
- Unlimited gateways
- 30-day analytics retention
Plus
On request
- Up to 5 serverless, 2 hybrid, 2 dedicated cloud gateways
- 1M API requests/month included
- Up to 2 developer portals
- Email support with 2-business-day SLA
Enterprise
On request
- Unlimited hybrid and dedicated cloud gateways
- Unlimited developer portals
- SSO and audit logs
- Dedicated success managers
Capabilities
Features
API request routing
Route and load-balance traffic across backend microservices.
Plugin ecosystem
Extend the gateway with plugins for auth, rate limiting, and transformations.
Developer portals
Publish and manage APIs for external or internal developers.
AI Gateway
Manage and route requests to multiple LLM providers through the gateway.
Analytics and observability
Retain and analyze API traffic analytics.
SSO and audit logs
Enterprise-grade access control and auditability.
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Kong Gateway free?
Kong's core gateway is open source and free to self-host. Kong Konnect, the managed cloud platform, offers a 30-day free trial before moving to paid Plus or custom Enterprise pricing.
SourceHow is usage metered on the Plus plan?
The Plus plan includes 1M API requests per month, with additional usage billed at $200 per extra 1 million requests up to a 10M/month cap, plus per-gateway and per-LLM-model charges.
SourceWhat support is included?
Plus includes email support with a 2-business-day SLA, while Enterprise adds dedicated success managers and professional services.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Kong Gateway
- Company
- Kong Inc.
- Based in
- San Francisco, California
Keep looking
Where to go from Kong Gateway
- Kong Gateway alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Kong Gateway pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Kong Gateway badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All APIs softwareThe full category
- Best APIs softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best APIs software for
Compare Kong Gateway with
- Tyk
- Moesif
- Treblle
- Convoy
- Janus Gateway
- Spring Cloud Gateway
- Gravitee
- Strapi
- WSO2 API Manager
- AWS API Gateway
- GraphQL Apollo
- Appwrite
- Sensedia
- Sila
- Swagger
- TIBCO Mashery
- Zeplo
- Spring Cloud Gateway
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Kong Gateway, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Kong Gateway pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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