Kong vs Pact

Overview

Kong

Stacks671

Followers1.5K

Votes139

GitHub Stars42.1K

Forks5.0K

Pact

Stacks59

Followers79

Votes0

GitHub Stars221

Forks90

Kong vs Pact: What are the differences?

Developers describe Kong as "Open Source Microservice & API Management Layer". 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. On the other hand, Pact is detailed as "Fast, easy and reliable testing for your APIs and microservices during development". It is a code-first tool for testing HTTP and message integrations using contract tests. Contract tests assert that inter-application messages conform to a shared understanding that is documented in a contract. Without contract testing, the only way to ensure that applications will work correctly together is by using expensive and brittle integration tests.

Kong and Pact belong to "Microservices Tools" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Kong are:

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

On the other hand, Pact provides the following key features:

Support for JavaScript, JVM, .NET, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Swift and more
Get fast, reliable feedback on the compatibility of your integrations
Ensures all your services are compatible with each other before you deploy

Kong and Pact are both open source tools. It seems that Kong with 25.6K GitHub stars and 3.28K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Pact with 196 GitHub stars and 93 GitHub forks.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Kong, Pact

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	Pact
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 is a code-first tool for testing HTTP and message integrations using contract tests. Contract tests assert that inter-application messages conform to a shared understanding that is documented in a contract. Without contract testing, the only way to ensure that applications will work correctly together is by using expensive and brittle integration tests.
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;	Support for JavaScript, JVM, .NET, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Swift and more; Get fast, reliable feedback on the compatibility of your integrations; Ensures all your services are compatible with each other before you deploy
Statistics
GitHub Stars 42.1K	GitHub Stars 221
GitHub Forks 5.0K	GitHub Forks 90
Stacks 671	Stacks 59
Followers 1.5K	Followers 79
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	JavaScript Ruby Python .NET Golang PHP Swift

What are some alternatives to Kong, Pact?

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Paw

Paw is a full-featured and beautifully designed Mac app that makes interaction with REST services delightful. Either you are an API maker or consumer, Paw helps you build HTTP requests, inspect the server's response and even generate client code.

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Appwrite

Appwrite's open-source platform lets you add Auth, DBs, Functions and Storage to your product and build any application at any scale, own your data, and use your preferred coding languages and tools.

Runscope

Keep tabs on all aspects of your API's performance with uptime monitoring, integration testing, logging and real-time monitoring.

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.

Insomnia REST Client

Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.

RAML

RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly.

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.

Related Comparisons

Some of the features offered by Kong are:

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

On the other hand, Pact provides the following key features:

Support for JavaScript, JVM, .NET, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Swift and more
Get fast, reliable feedback on the compatibility of your integrations
Ensures all your services are compatible with each other before you deploy

Kong and Pact are both open source tools. It seems that Kong with 25.6K GitHub stars and 3.28K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Pact with 196 GitHub stars and 93 GitHub forks.

Kong vs Pact