Go Micro vs Kong

Overview

Kong

Stacks671

Followers1.5K

Votes139

GitHub Stars42.1K

Forks5.0K

Go Micro

Stacks20

Followers47

Votes0

GitHub Stars22.6K

Forks2.4K

Go Micro vs Kong: What are the differences?

Comparison between Go Micro and Kong

Both Go Micro and Kong are popular tools in the realm of microservices, each serving a unique purpose. Let's delve into the key differences that set them apart.

Architecture: Go Micro is a framework for building distributed systems with a focus on microservices, providing a way to simplify the development of complex applications. On the other hand, Kong is an API gateway and management layer that acts as a gateway for all microservices in a given architecture, handling tasks like authentication, traffic control, and monitoring.
Language Support: Go Micro is specifically designed for use with the Go programming language, making it ideal for Golang developers looking to build microservices. In contrast, Kong is language-agnostic, allowing developers to integrate it with services written in various programming languages.
Plugins and Extensions: Kong comes with a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions that extend its functionality, enabling users to customize and enhance their API management capabilities. While Go Micro offers support for plugins, its focus lies more on providing tools for building and connecting microservices.
Scalability and Performance: Go Micro places emphasis on improving the performance and scalability of microservices by providing tools like service discovery, load balancing, and inter-service communication. Kong, on the other hand, is geared towards handling high volumes of requests and traffic efficiently, making it a robust choice for managing large-scale API ecosystems.
Community and Support: Go Micro has a vibrant community of developers and contributors who actively maintain and enhance the framework, offering support and updates on a regular basis. Kong also boasts a strong community backing but is primarily supported by Kong Inc., the company behind the development of the tool.
Deployment Flexibility: Go Micro supports various deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and Kubernetes, making it adaptable to different environments. Kong, being an API gateway, is typically deployed in front of microservices to handle API traffic, serving as a universal entry point for all external requests.

In Summary, Go Micro is tailored for building microservices with a strong focus on distributed systems, while Kong serves as a powerful API gateway and management layer for handling API traffic efficiently.

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CLI (Node.js)

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Advice on Kong, Go Micro

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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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kong	Go Micro
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.	It provides the core requirements for distributed systems development including RPC and Event driven communication. The micro philosophy is sane defaults with a pluggable architecture. We provide defaults to get you started quickly but everything can be easily swapped out.
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;	Service Discovery; Load Balancing; Message Encoding; Async Messaging; Pluggable Interfaces
Statistics
GitHub Stars 42.1K	GitHub Stars 22.6K
GitHub Forks 5.0K	GitHub Forks 2.4K
Stacks 671	Stacks 20
Followers 1.5K	Followers 47
Votes 139	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 37 Easy to maintain 32 Easy to install 26 Flexible 21 Great performance 7 Api blueprint	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Cassandra Docker Prometheus Kubernetes PostgreSQL NGINX Vagrant	Kubernetes Golang

What are some alternatives to Kong, Go Micro ?

Istio

Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc.

Amazon API Gateway

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.

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.

Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps.

Moleculer

It is a fault tolerant framework. It has built-in load balancer, circuit breaker, retries, timeout and bulkhead features. It is open source and free of charge project.

Express Gateway

A cloud-native microservices gateway completely configurable and extensible through JavaScript/Node.js built for ALL platforms and languages. Enterprise features are FREE thanks to the power of 3K+ ExpressJS battle hardened modules.

ArangoDB Foxx

It is a JavaScript framework for writing data-centric HTTP microservices that run directly inside of ArangoDB.

Dapr

It is a portable, event-driven runtime that makes it easy for developers to build resilient, stateless and stateful microservices that run on the cloud and edge and embraces the diversity of languages and developer frameworks.

Zuul

It is the front door for all requests from devices and websites to the backend of the Netflix streaming application. As an edge service application, It is built to enable dynamic routing, monitoring, resiliency, and security. Routing is an integral part of a microservice architecture.

linkerd

linkerd is an out-of-process network stack for microservices. It functions as a transparent RPC proxy, handling everything needed to make inter-service RPC safe and sane--including load-balancing, service discovery, instrumentation, and routing.

Related Comparisons

Go Micro vs Kong: What are the differences?

Comparison between Go Micro and Kong

Both Go Micro and Kong are popular tools in the realm of microservices, each serving a unique purpose. Let's delve into the key differences that set them apart.

Architecture: Go Micro is a framework for building distributed systems with a focus on microservices, providing a way to simplify the development of complex applications. On the other hand, Kong is an API gateway and management layer that acts as a gateway for all microservices in a given architecture, handling tasks like authentication, traffic control, and monitoring.
Language Support: Go Micro is specifically designed for use with the Go programming language, making it ideal for Golang developers looking to build microservices. In contrast, Kong is language-agnostic, allowing developers to integrate it with services written in various programming languages.
Plugins and Extensions: Kong comes with a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions that extend its functionality, enabling users to customize and enhance their API management capabilities. While Go Micro offers support for plugins, its focus lies more on providing tools for building and connecting microservices.
Scalability and Performance: Go Micro places emphasis on improving the performance and scalability of microservices by providing tools like service discovery, load balancing, and inter-service communication. Kong, on the other hand, is geared towards handling high volumes of requests and traffic efficiently, making it a robust choice for managing large-scale API ecosystems.
Community and Support: Go Micro has a vibrant community of developers and contributors who actively maintain and enhance the framework, offering support and updates on a regular basis. Kong also boasts a strong community backing but is primarily supported by Kong Inc., the company behind the development of the tool.
Deployment Flexibility: Go Micro supports various deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and Kubernetes, making it adaptable to different environments. Kong, being an API gateway, is typically deployed in front of microservices to handle API traffic, serving as a universal entry point for all external requests.

Go Micro vs Kong

Overview

Go Micro vs Kong: What are the differences?