Editorial take
Why it stands out
Kong should be framed as a full API platform with gateway roots, not just as another ingress controller.
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Tool profile
Open-source-rooted API platform and gateway for managing APIs, AI gateways, events, and microservices with a clear Konnect cloud pricing ladder.
API gateway
Kong belongs in the database because it is one of the defining gateway and API platform names in modern infrastructure. The official product pages position Kong Konnect as a unified API platform for APIs, AI, events, and microservices, while the broader Kong story still anchors around Kong Gateway as the open-source runtime foundation. That matters because Kong is not just a reverse proxy and not only an enterprise API manager. It is a full platform choice for teams trying to centralize connectivity, governance, portals, analytics, and increasingly AI-era traffic patterns.
Its pricing is also strong enough to compare seriously. Kong currently offers a 30-day free trial at $0, a Plus plan charged per gateway per month, and Enterprise as custom annual pricing. The public pricing page is unusually detailed, showing included gateway counts, developer portal limits, API request volumes, control plane pricing, and some add-on prices. That makes Kong one of the higher-quality commercial entries in the API platform category because buyers can understand how the pricing model actually scales.
Quick fit
Editorial take
Kong should be framed as a full API platform with gateway roots, not just as another ingress controller.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
Compare with
Pressure-test this pick against nearby alternatives.
Apache Kafka
Free planEvent streaming and event-driven architectures
Open-source distributed event streaming platform for high-throughput pipelines, pub/sub, and stream-processing ecosystems.
Choose Kafka when replayable event streams and ecosystem breadth matter more than the lightest possible operational footprint.
Pricing snapshot
Kong currently offers a 30-day free trial at $0, a Plus plan billed per gateway per month, and Enterprise as custom annual pricing. The official pricing page includes public limits and rates for control planes, requests, analytics, governed services, and AI gateway add-ons.
Arcjet
Free planApplication runtime security
Runtime security toolkit for modern applications and AI systems that helps teams enforce quotas, block bots, prevent prompt abuse, and ship app-level protections in code.
Closer to application-runtime security and abuse-prevention tooling than to classic perimeter appliances.
