Ten of fourteen models named Kong Gateway first on the direct prompt; one named Zuplo. Kong Gateway was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Zuplo by eleven and Kong Gateway carries 70 labels and Zuplo 24, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in three categories this edition.
Named in four categories this edition.
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the API gateways page.
Across every category in the October 2026 Edition, Kong Gateway and Zuplo were named in the same answer 121 times, of the 427 answers naming Kong Gateway and the 156 naming Zuplo. In those answers Zuplo took the first choice forty-eight times and Kong Gateway thirty-six.
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | ||||||
| GPT-5.4 mini | ||||||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | ||||||
| Perplexity Sonar | ||||||
| Grok 4.20 | ||||||
| Mistral Small | ||||||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | ||||||
| Llama 4 Maverick | ||||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | ||||||
| Kimi K2 | ||||||
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | ||||||
| MiniMax M2.5 | ||||||
| GPT-6 Luna | ||||||
| Muse Glimmer 30B |
Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Four of four in this category shown.
“Don’t start a new deployment on this version. Kong says it entered end-of-life in July 2026” GPT-6 Luna · negative prompt · hard negative
“Its flexibility is useful, but self-managed deployments mean more operational responsibility; hybrid setups also require attention to plugin and version compatibility.” GPT-6 Luna · comparative prompt · soft negative
“Kong Gateway is usually the best default choice if you need a general-purpose API gateway with strong extensibility and flexibility.” Perplexity Sonar · direct prompt · first choice
“Shortlist: Kong (extensible, scalable), AWS API Gateway (if AWS-heavy), Zuplo (fast DX, edge-native), Tyk (open-source friendly).” Grok 4.20 · scale prompt · first choice
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. One of one in this category shown.
“If you are running a modern SaaS stack and want to spend your engineering hours on building your B2B product rather than managing gateway servers, start with Zuplo.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · paraphrase prompt · first choice
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.