Comparison

Kong Gateway vs KrakenD

No clear leader: KrakenD (51.9) and Kong Gateway (49.4) 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.

Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
Kong Gateway49
KrakenD52
Score
Vioscale score
Kong Gateway49 / 100high · 76%
KrakenD52 / 100high · 76%
Pricing
Free tier
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Model
Kong Gatewaycommercial
KrakenDcommercial
Price level
Kong Gatewaylow
KrakenDlow
Transparent
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Integrations
Count
Kong Gateway11
KrakenD13
Reliability
Status page
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Adoption
Dependent repos
Kong Gateway1
KrakenD0
Github stars
Kong Gateway44,043
KrakenD2,668
Activity
Commits last 30d
Kong Gateway1
KrakenD9
Release
Cadence days
Kong Gateway29
KrakenD24
History
Kong Gateway20 items
KrakenD20 items
License
Spdx
Kong GatewayApache-2.0
KrakenDApache-2.0
Language
Primary
Kong GatewayLua
KrakenDGo

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for api gateways. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Deployment
Hosting
Kong GatewayCloud + self-hosted
KrakenDCloud + self-hosted
Kubernetes-native
Kong Gateway
KrakenD-
Traffic
Rate limiting
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Request/response transformation
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Security
OAuth2 / OIDC / JWT
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Mutual TLS
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Protocols
GraphQL gateway
Kong Gateway-
KrakenD
gRPC support
Kong Gateway-
KrakenD
Delivery
Developer portal
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Monetization
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Ecosystem
Plugin ecosystem
Kong GatewayExtensive
KrakenDLimited
Insight
Observability
Kong Gateway
KrakenD

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Kong Gateway

Kong provides a unified platform for building, testing, and governing APIs and AI agents. It handles both traditional API gateway functions—routing, rate limiting, authentication—and modern AI-specific concerns like token budgeting, context management, and LLM traffic control. Includes gateway, API management, testing tools, and event streaming capabilities.

Independently observed

KrakenD

KrakenD is an open-source API gateway offering both a free community edition and a commercial enterprise version. It provides API aggregation, request/response transformation, traffic management, and security features for microservices and AI workload routing.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Kong Gateway

SubscriptionFree tier
as of verify ↗

KrakenD

HybridFree tier

Free Community Edition; Enterprise Edition available by quote

  • Community EditionFree
  • Enterprise EditionContact sales
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
CLI
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Self-hosted
Kong Gateway
KrakenD
Hybrid
Kong Gateway
KrakenD

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (1)
  • OpenAI

Kong Gateway

11 total - 10 not shared
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • Anthropic
  • Llama 3
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Git
  • Stripe
  • Twilio
Independently observed

KrakenD

13 total - 12 not shared
  • REST APIs
  • RabbitMQ
  • SNS
  • SQS
  • Kafka
  • GraphQL
  • gRPC
  • SOAP
  • Lambda
  • NATS
  • Moesif
  • Google Analytics
Independently observed

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.