Kong Gateway vs Traefik Hub API Gateway
Kong Gateway
konghq.comTraefik Hub API Gateway
traefik.ioSide by side
| Figure | Kong Gateway | Traefik Hub API Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 1 |
| Spec score · API Gateway Software | 7.8 (#12) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Company history | Kong's company page says its story began in Milan in 2009 and that the API gateway was open-sourced and named Kong later in the company's history. | Traefik Labs says it was founded in 2016. |
| Deployment | Kong says the gateway can run on premises, in cloud, Kubernetes, or serverless environments, with or without a database and in hybrid or cloud-hosted modes. | The documentation provides installation paths for Kubernetes and Linux and describes Traefik Hub API Gateway as multi-platform. |
| Founded | 2017 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, USA | France and the United States |
| Purpose | Kong Gateway is an open-source API gateway built for hybrid and multi-cloud environments and optimized for microservices and distributed architectures. | Traefik Hub is an API Management as Code platform for DevOps and Platform Engineering teams using GitOps-driven API lifecycle workflows. |
| Support | Konnect Plus includes email support with a two-business-day SLA; Enterprise lists dedicated customer success and technical account managers and higher SLAs. | The documentation feature matrix marks built-in commercial support as available across its listed tiers. |
Plans
Kong Gateway
- Free trialFree
- PlusPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Kong Gateway Open SourceFree
- Konnect Free trialFree
- Konnect EnterprisePriced on request
- Konnect PlusPrice not published
In their own words
Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Traefik Hub API Gateway
Traefik Hub API Gateway is a hybrid gateway for managing and securing APIs and microservices. It discovers services and adjusts routing when services are deployed or removed, with Kubernetes service discovery, Helm charts, Gateway API, and declarative configuration through Kubernetes resources and CRDs. It supports HTTP, HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, WebSockets, and gRPC, alongside rate limiting, request transformation, HTTP caching, canary deployments, and graceful configuration reloads.
Security options include JWT, OAuth2, OIDC, LDAP, API keys, HMAC, and Open Policy Agent, as well as TLS management and a Web Application Firewall powered by OWASP Coraza. The feature matrix lists FIPS 140-3 compliance. API management includes an inventory, versioning, plans and bundles, subscriptions, and a developer portal with interactive testing and access-credential generation. GitOps tools such as Flux and Argo are supported. The product is stateless and horizontally scalable, and integrates with HashiCorp Vault and OpenTelemetry. It is intended for DevOps and Platform Engineering teams. Pricing is available on request; there is no free plan, though a free trial is offered without a stated duration.