What is Kong?
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.
Kong is a tool in the API Gateway category of a tech stack.
Kong is an open source tool with 34.9K GitHub stars and 4.5K GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Kong's open source repository on GitHub
Who uses Kong?
Companies
157 companies reportedly use Kong in their tech stacks, including CRED, GO-JEK, and deleokorea.
Developers
397 developers on StackShare have stated that they use Kong.
Kong Integrations
Docker, NGINX, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and Vagrant are some of the popular tools that integrate with Kong. Here's a list of all 15 tools that integrate with Kong.
Pros of Kong
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Decisions about Kong
Here are some stack decisions, common use cases and reviews by companies and developers who chose Kong in their tech stack.
Anas MOKDAD
Software Architect · | 4 upvotes · 934.1K views
As for the new support of service mesh pattern by Kong, I wonder how does it compare to Istio?
sathish subramaniam
Hello :) We are using Datadog on Kong to monitor the metrics and analytics.
We feel that the cost associated with Datadog is high in terms of custom metrics and indexations. So, we planned to find an alternative for Datadog and we are looking into Grafana implementation with kong.
Will the shift from Datadog to Grafana be a wise move and flawless?
Blog Posts
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Kong's Features
- 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
Kong Alternatives & Comparisons
What are some alternatives to Kong?
Apigee
API management, design, analytics, and security are at the heart of modern digital architecture. The Apigee intelligent API platform is a complete solution for moving business to the digital world.
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.
Ambassador
Map services to arbitrary URLs in a single, declarative YAML file. Configure routes with CORS support, circuit breakers, timeouts, and more. Replace your Kubernetes ingress controller. Route gRPC, WebSockets, or HTTP.
Azure API Management
Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Streamline your work across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a single place for managing all your APIs.
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.
