Kong vs Ocelot: What are the differences?

Kong and Ocelot are API gateway solutions designed to manage and secure microservices architectures. Let's explore the key differences between them.

1. Authentication and Authorization: Kong offers a wide range of authentication and authorization methods, including OAuth, JWT, HMAC, and Key Authentication. Ocelot, on the other hand, primarily focuses on providing JWT authentication and does not have native support for other authentication methods.

2. Routing and Load Balancing: Kong excels in advanced routing capabilities with support for path-based routing, request/response transformation, and dynamic load balancing using various algorithms. Ocelot, while having basic routing capabilities, lacks some of the advanced features available in Kong, making it more suitable for simpler routing scenarios.

3. Plugin Ecosystem: Kong provides a rich plugin ecosystem that allows for extensive customization and features like rate limiting, logging, caching, and request/response modifying. Ocelot has a limited set of plugins available and lacks some of the advanced functionality provided by Kong's extensive plugin ecosystem.

4. Performance and Scalability: Kong is known for its high-performance architecture, designed to handle a large number of requests and scale horizontally. Ocelot, while being performant, may not scale as well as Kong in high-traffic scenarios due to its architecture limitations.

5. Service Discovery and Configuration: Kong offers integration with multiple service discovery tools like Consul, etcd, and ZooKeeper, making it easier to configure and manage microservices. Ocelot, on the other hand, relies on manual configuration or limited integrations, making it less flexible in dynamic service environments.

6. Community and Support: Kong has a strong community and is backed by a commercial company, providing extensive documentation, support, and regular updates. Ocelot has a smaller community and limited support options, making it less suitable for enterprise-level projects requiring robust support and maintenance.

In summary, Kong offers a comprehensive set of features, advanced routing capabilities, extensive authentication and authorization options, and a rich plugin ecosystem, making it a powerful API gateway solution. Ocelot, while being suitable for simpler routing scenarios and offering JWT authentication, may lack some of the advanced features and scalability capabilities provided by Kong.