vioscaleAI
Comparison

Kong Gateway vs KrakenD

No clear leader: Kong Gateway (53.8) and KrakenD (49.9) 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.

Kong Gateway full profile →KrakenD full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Kong Gateway54
KrakenD50
Score
vioscaleAI score
Kong Gateway54 / 100medium · 74%
KrakenD50 / 100medium · 67%
Pricing
Free tier
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
Model
Kong Gatewayopen_source
KrakenDfreemium
Price level
Kong Gatewayfree
KrakenDlow
Transparent
Kong Gateway✗
KrakenD✓
Integrations
Count
Kong Gateway12
KrakenD12
Security
Certifications
Kong Gateway–
KrakenDSOC 2 Type II
Disclosure policy
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD–
Gdpr
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
Pci
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD–
Scorecard
Kong Gateway7.5
KrakenD–
Soc2
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Kong Gateway99.99
KrakenD–
Status page
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Kong Gateway1
KrakenD0
Github stars
Kong Gateway44,260
KrakenD2,691
Activity
Commits last 30d
Kong Gateway10
KrakenD23
Release
Cadence days
Kong Gateway42
KrakenD19
History
Kong Gateway20 items
KrakenD20 items
License
Spdx
Kong GatewayApache-2.0
KrakenDApache-2.0
Language
Primary
Kong GatewayLua
KrakenDGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Kong Gateway8 items
KrakenD8 items

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 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.

Independently observed

KrakenD

An open-source gateway positioned between client applications and backend services that aggregates, transforms, and secures API traffic across distributed microservice architectures with minimal resource consumption.

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

Open source

Open source core; Kong Konnect cloud platform offers free trial and commercial subscriptions

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✗
Linux
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
CLI
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✗
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
Self-hosted
Kong Gateway✓
KrakenD✓
On-premise
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 (4)
  • OpenAI
  • Apache Kafka
  • Prometheus
  • AWS Lambda

Kong Gateway

19 total - 15 not shared
  • AWS Bedrock
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • Anthropic
  • Llama 3
  • Kubernetes
  • Helm
  • Git
  • Stripe
  • Twilio
  • Llama
  • DocuSign
  • Insomnia
  • Redis
  • cert-manager
Independently observed

KrakenD

24 total - 20 not shared
  • REST APIs
  • RabbitMQ
  • SNS
  • SQS
  • Kafka
  • GraphQL
  • gRPC
  • SOAP
  • Lambda
  • NATS
  • Moesif
  • Google Analytics
  • Amazon SNS
  • Amazon SQS
  • Elasticsearch
  • Kibana
  • Datadog
  • Grafana
  • Zipkin
  • Jaeger
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Kong Gateway or KrakenD: 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.