Apache APISIX vs Kong Gateway
No clear leader: Apache APISIX (54.2) and Kong Gateway (53.8) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for api gateways. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Apache APISIX
Open-source software that manages and routes traffic to APIs and AI services. Designed for flexible deployment on your own infrastructure with extensive customization through plugins.
Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway is a scalable API and LLM gateway platform designed for cloud-native deployments. It provides traffic management, authentication, rate limiting, request transformation, and advanced AI capabilities.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- AWS Bedrock
- AWS Lambda
- Kubernetes
- Prometheus
Apache APISIX
- DeepSeek
- Ollama
- gRPC
- gRPC-Web
- Open Policy Agent
- Spring Boot
- OAuth2
- OpenID Connect
- Keycloak
- Istio
- Kuma
- Azure Serverless Function
- Apache OpenWhisk
- Vault
- Dubbo
- MQTT
- etcd
- OpenTelemetry
- ClickHouse
- Google Cloud
- Azure Functions
- HashiCorp Vault
Kong Gateway
- Azure Content Safety
- Google Cloud Model Armor
- Llama 3
- Helm
- Git
- Stripe
- Twilio
- Llama
- DocuSign
- Insomnia
- Apache Kafka
- Redis
- cert-manager
Apache APISIX or Kong Gateway: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.