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

Prateek Mittal

Chose

Istio

over

Traefik

Kong

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 Ambassador

Pros of Kong

Pros of Traefik

2
Edge-proxy
1
Kubernetes friendly configuration

36
Easy to maintain
30
Easy to install
22
Flexible
20
Great performance
5
Api blueprint
4
Custom Plugins
3
Kubernetes-native
2
Agnostic
1
Documentation is clear
1
1
0
12
0
123123
0
123
0
12312312

19
Kubernetes integration
16
Watch service discovery updates
12
Swarm integration
12
Letsencrypt support
11
Several backends
4
Ready-to-use dashboard
4
Rancher integration
2
Easy setup
1
Mantl integration
1
Mesos integration

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Cons of Ambassador

Cons of Kong

Cons of Traefik

Be the first to leave a con

7
Complicated setup
6
Not very performant (fast)

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What is 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.

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.

What is Traefik?

A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.

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What companies use Ambassador?

What companies use Kong?

What companies use Traefik?

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What tools integrate with Ambassador?

What tools integrate with Kong?

What tools integrate with Traefik?

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Blog Posts

How Mashape Manages Over 15,000 APIs & Microservices

Sep 25 2015 at 8:45AM

Kong

+26

14932

What are some alternatives to Ambassador, Kong, and Traefik?

Consul

Consul is a tool for service discovery and configuration. Consul is distributed, highly available, and extremely scalable.

Envoy

Originally built at Lyft, Envoy is a high performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications, as well as a communication bus and “universal data plane” designed for large microservice “service mesh” architectures.

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.

Postman

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

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.

See all alternatives

Interest over time

How much does Ambassador cost?

How much does Kong cost?

How much does Traefik cost?

Pricing unavailable

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