Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Conductor vs Kong: What are the differences?
# Introduction
This Markdown code addresses the key differences between Conductor and Kong, two popular technologies used for API management.
1. **Architecture**: Conductor is a workflow orchestration engine that focuses on managing and executing complex business processes, while Kong is an API gateway that acts as a middleware layer between clients and servers to manage API traffic and security.
2. **Use Case**: Conductor is primarily utilized for workflow automation and managing dependencies between tasks in a distributed environment, whereas Kong is designed for API traffic management, authentication, authorization, and rate limiting.
3. **Deployment**: Conductor can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, offering flexibility in where workflows are orchestrated, while Kong is typically deployed as a gateway in front of APIs to manage incoming and outgoing traffic.
4. **Plugins**: Kong provides a wide range of plugins for extending functionality, such as logging, monitoring, and authentication mechanisms, whereas Conductor focuses more on workflow-related features and lacks the extensive plugin ecosystem of Kong.
5. **Scalability**: Conductor is optimized for horizontal scaling to handle large-scale workflows and complex dependencies, whereas Kong is built for high availability, performance, and scalability to efficiently manage API traffic in distributed systems.
6. **Community Support**: Kong has a vibrant open-source community with frequent updates, extensive documentation, and community-contributed plugins, while Conductor has a smaller but active community, which may impact the availability of resources and support.
In Summary, Conductor and Kong differ in their architecture, use cases, deployment options, plugin ecosystems, scalability, and community support.
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.
Pros of Conductor
Pros of Kong
- Easy to maintain37
- Easy to install32
- Flexible26
- Great performance21
- Api blueprint7
- Custom Plugins4
- Kubernetes-native3
- Security2
- Has a good plugin infrastructure2
- Agnostic2
- Load balancing1
- Documentation is clear1
- Very customizable1