Kong · 2 categories · RankedKong Gateway
Standing by category
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| API gateways | Developer platform | 61% | 1 of 51 | 13% | 71 | endorsed leader |
| API management | Developer platform | 37% | 1 of 55 | 9% | 64 | endorsed leader |
Movement
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 9 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 8 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 4 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 12 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 9 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 8 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 14 |
| Mistral Small | 4 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 10 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 13 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 4 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 9 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 6 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 13 |
| Kimi K2 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 14 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 12 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 12 |
By framing
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“Kong Enterprise: (Hybrid/SaaS/Self-hosted). Built on Envoy/Nginx. Extremely performant, vast plugin ecosystem, and very strong GitOps/Kubernetes support.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · API gateways · scale prompt · first choice
“Choose Kong or APISIX if you have a high-traffic microservices infrastructure and need low latency, flexible hosting, and a robust plugin ecosystem.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · API gateways · comparative prompt · first choice
“the best default choice is usually Kong Gateway because it offers the strongest balance of flexibility, features, and operational control” Perplexity Sonar · API gateways · direct prompt · first choice
“Kong Gateway is frequently cited as the best overall and most flexible option, especially for mid-sized businesses.” Mistral Small · API gateways · paraphrase prompt · first choice
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Other outdated API gateways such as Kong, 3scale, and Layer7 are also not fit for modern cloud-native architectures.” Llama 4 Maverick · API management · negative prompt · hard negative
“Free trials, then usage-based (~$25+/mo)—avoid if truly limited budget.” Grok 4.1 Fast · API gateways · budget prompt · hard negative
“Kong: avoid it if you do not have in-house Lua expertise” Perplexity Sonar · API management · negative prompt · hard negative
“*Warning:* While the Core is free, the documentation for open-source installation can be heavy, and the ecosystem pushes users heavily toward their paid Enterprise tier.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · API gateways · budget prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
What carried it into the answer
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 294 of the 372 answers that named Kong Gateway and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
1,084 of the 1,084 domain citations in answers naming Kong Gateway came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Names read as Kong Gateway
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