Overview

Kong

Stacks671

Followers1.5K

Votes139

GitHub Stars42.1K

Forks5.0K

Amazon API Gateway

Stacks1.4K

Followers1.1K

Votes45

Amazon API Gateway vs Kong: What are the differences?

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Amazon API Gateway and Kong. Both are popular choices for managing APIs, but they have some distinct features that set them apart.

Scalability: Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service provided by AWS, offering automatic scaling to handle high traffic loads. Kong, on the other hand, requires manual configuration and scaling for high traffic situations.
Customization: Kong provides extensive customization options through various plugins, allowing users to add functionalities such as authentication, rate limiting, and transformations. Amazon API Gateway also offers some customization options, but they are more limited compared to Kong.
Deployment Options: Amazon API Gateway is a cloud-based service provided by AWS, which means it can only be deployed on AWS infrastructure. Kong, on the other hand, is an open-source solution that can be deployed on any infrastructure, including on-premises servers and multiple cloud providers.
Pricing Model: Amazon API Gateway follows a consumption-based pricing model, where users are charged based on the number of API requests and data transfer. Kong, being open-source, is free to use, but users need to manage their own infrastructure costs.
Ecosystem and Support: Amazon API Gateway is backed by AWS, providing a robust ecosystem with extensive documentation, support, and integration with other AWS services. Kong has a vibrant community and offers community support, but it may not have the same level of integration and support as AWS.
API Management Features: Amazon API Gateway offers a wide range of API management features, including request/response transformation, caching, monitoring, and developer portal. Kong also provides similar features, but it may require additional configuration and customization.

In summary, Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service with excellent scalability and integration within the AWS ecosystem. Kong, on the other hand, offers more customization options and deployment flexibility, making it suitable for users who require extensive control over their API management solution.

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Advice on Kong, Amazon API Gateway

Prateek

Mar 14, 2020

Decided

Istio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn-keyIstio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn key solution with Rancher whereas Kong completely lacks here. Traffic distribution in Istio can be done via canary, a/b, shadowing, HTTP headers, ACL, whitelist whereas in Kong it's limited to canary, ACL, blue-green, proxy caching. Istio has amazing community support which is visible via Github stars or releases when comparing both.

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Detailed Comparison

Kong	Amazon API Gateway
Kong is a scalable, open source API Layer (also known as an API Gateway, or API Middleware). Kong controls layer 4 and 7 traffic and is extended through Plugins, which provide extra functionality and services beyond the core platform.	Amazon API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, authorization and access control, monitoring, and API version management.
Logging: Log requests and responses to your system over TCP, UDP or to disk; OAuth2.0: Add easily an OAuth2.0 authentication to your APIs; Monitoring: Live monitoring provides key load and performance server metrics; IP-restriction: Whitelist or blacklist IPs that can make requests; Authentication: Manage consumer credentials query string and header tokens; Rate-limiting: Block and throttle requests based on IP or authentication; Transformations: Add, remove or manipulate HTTP params and headers on-the-fly; CORS: Enable cross-origin requests to your APIs that would otherwise be blocked; Anything: Need custom functionality? Extend Kong with your own Lua plugins;	Build, Deploy and Manage APIs; Resiliency;API Lifecycle Management;SDK Generation;API Operations Monitoring;AWS Authorization;API Keys for Third-Party Developers
Statistics
GitHub Stars 42.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 5.0K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 671	Stacks 1.4K
Followers 1.5K	Followers 1.1K
Votes 139	Votes 45
Pros & Cons
Pros 37 Easy to maintain 32 Easy to install 26 Flexible 21 Great performance 7 Api blueprint	Pros 37 AWS Integration 7 Websockets 1 Serverless Cons 2 No websocket broadcast 1 Less expensive
Integrations
Cassandra Docker Prometheus Kubernetes PostgreSQL NGINX Vagrant	AWS Lambda Amazon CloudWatch

What are some alternatives to Kong, Amazon API Gateway?

Tyk Cloud

Tyk is a leading Open Source API Gateway and Management Platform, featuring an API gateway, analytics, developer portal and dashboard. We power billions of transactions for thousands of innovative organisations.

Moesif

Build a winning API platform with instant, meaningful visibility into API usage and customer adoption

Ambassador

Map services to arbitrary URLs in a single, declarative YAML file. Configure routes with CORS support, circuit breakers, timeouts, and more. Replace your Kubernetes ingress controller. Route gRPC, WebSockets, or HTTP.

Azure API Management

Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Streamline your work across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a single place for managing all your APIs.

API Umbrella

API Umbrella is a proxy that sits in front of your APIs. It can seamlessly add common functionality like api keys, rate limiting, and analytics to any API.

Treblle

It makes it super easy to understand what’s going on with your APIs and the apps that use them. You can add it to any API using one of our SDKs for PHP, Laravel, .NET, Node, Ruby and Python. Once you add our SDK out of the box you get: real time API monitoring and logging, error tracking, automatically generated documentation, quality scoring and analytics. Essentially you get all the tools you need to build and ship APIs with ease. Treblle isn’t built just for back-end and API developers. You can invite team members to you project and they all get the same features.

Google Cloud API Gateway

It enables you to provide secure access to your backend services through a well-defined REST API that is consistent across all of your services, regardless of the service implementation. Clients consume your REST APIS to implement standalone apps for a mobile device or tablet, through apps running in a browser, or through any other type of app that can make a request to an HTTP endpoint.