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Kong vs Traefik: What are the differences?
What is Kong? 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.
What is Traefik? Load Balancer for Microservices. Træfɪk is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer made to deploy microservices with ease. It supports several backends (Docker, Swarm, Mesos/Marathon, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Zookeeper, BoltDB, Rest API, file...) to manage its configuration automatically and dynamically.
Kong and Traefik are primarily classified as "Microservices" and "Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy" tools respectively.
"Easy to maintain" is the primary reason why developers consider Kong over the competitors, whereas "Kubernetes integration" was stated as the key factor in picking Traefik.
Kong and Traefik are both open source tools. Traefik with 23.2K GitHub stars and 2.4K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Kong with 22.4K GitHub stars and 2.75K GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Traefik has a broader approval, being mentioned in 47 company stacks & 20 developers stacks; compared to Kong, which is listed in 50 company stacks and 14 developer stacks.
We switched to Traefik so we can use the REST API to dynamically configure subdomains and have the ability to redirect between multiple servers.
We still use nginx with a docker-compose to expose the traffic from our APIs and TCP microservices, but for managing routing to the internet Traefik does a much better job
The biggest win for naologic was the ability to set dynamic configurations without having to restart the server
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 Kong
- Easy to maintain37
- Easy to install32
- Flexible26
- Great performance21
- Api blueprint6
- Custom Plugins4
- Kubernetes-native3
- Security2
- Has a good plugin infrastructure2
- Agnostic2
- Load balancing1
- Documentation is clear1
- Very customizable1
Pros of Traefik
- Kubernetes integration20
- Watch service discovery updates18
- Letsencrypt support14
- Swarm integration13
- Several backends12
- Ready-to-use dashboard6
- Easy setup4
- Rancher integration4
- Mesos integration1
- Mantl integration1
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Cons of Kong
Cons of Traefik
- Not very performant (fast)7
- Complicated setup7
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What is Kong?
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