IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › KrakenD · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

KrakenD

24Judge labels

1First choices

1Negative labels

8 of 12Models named it

2Categories

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

8 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. KrakenD was named 8 times in API gateways and 1 other category, where Kong Gateway led with 61%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business12 of 38

under the label threshold

Mid-market6 of 51

under the label threshold

Enterprise16 of 42

under the label threshold

In api gateways · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named KrakenD for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
API gateways	Developer platform	2%	6 of 51	0%	7	under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 61%
API management	Developer platform	0%	28 of 55	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Kong Gateway at 37%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for KrakenD yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated KrakenD across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	3	0	3
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	1	0	1	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct3 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative5 labelsNone

Budget-constrained9 labels1

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative4 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative24 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 2 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“If you want a fully free, self-hosted solution, Kong or KrakenD are excellent.” Mistral Small · API gateways · budget prompt · first choice

“if you have an exceptionally strong, self-sufficient platform engineering team that prefers highly performant, open-source, stateless, and declarative gateways” Gemini 3.5 Flash · API management · scale prompt · alternative

“lightweight alternatives like KrakenD, Apache APISIX, or Gloo Edge offer GitOps-friendly configurations” Gemini 3.5 Flash · API gateways · negative prompt · alternative

“Runs on minimal hardware (can easily sit on a $5/month VPS) and does not require a database to operate.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · API gateways · budget prompt · alternative

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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as KrakenD, over the 24 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and KrakenD was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Kong Gateway23 of 2410Not in the top three

Amazon API Gateway21 of 243Not in the top three

Tyk19 of 242Not in the top three

Apigee14 of 241Not in the top three

Zuplo13 of 246Not in the top three

Apache APISIX13 of 242Not in the top three

Azure API Management8 of 240Not in the top three

Traefik8 of 240Not in the top three

Gravitee7 of 240Not in the top three

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform7 of 240Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named KrakenD. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 17 of the 24 answers that named KrakenD and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

zuplo.com11

geekflare.com10

toolradar.com10

dupple.com9

moesif.com8

reddit.com8

sourceforge.net6

api7.ai5

knoxcall.com5

konghq.com5

Seventy-seven of the seventy-seven domain citations in answers naming KrakenD came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

geekflare.com/guides/best-api-gateways10

toolradar.com/guides/best-api-gateways10

dupple.com/learn/best-api-gateways9

reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1s36hm2/best_api_management_tools_for_smaller_companies6

knoxcall.com/blog/article/best-api-gateways-small-teams-20265

zuplo.com/learning-center/api-gateway-pricing-comparison-20265

gartner.com/reviews/market/api-management4

moesif.com/blog/api-engineering/api-gateways/Open-Source-API-Gateway-Roundup4

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as KrakenD

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as KrakenD; a claim can dispute any of them.

KrakenD (Community Edition) 1KrakenD CE 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when KrakenD's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as KrakenD, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at krakend.io is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.