Comparing Gloo Gateway and Kong Security, Governance, Flexibility, and Customization

When it comes to API management, it’s important to strike a balance between security measures and flexibility in order to meet diverse business needs.

Gloo Gateway and Kong are two of the API gateway solutions we’ve assessed for those features, as well as five others, in our comprehensive API gateway buyer’s guide.

In part 3 of our series (see part 1 here and part 2 here), we’re looking at how each solution handles security and governance and flexibility and customization.

Security and Governance

API gateways should ensure seamless adherence to security protocols and consistent implementation across all APIs.

These are the API gateway security and governance capabilities we compared:

• Role-based access control determines level of access based on a user’s assigned role.
• External authentication and authorization delegates user identity verification and access control to an external system or service.
• Traffic management controls the flow of requests and responses between clients and backend services.
• Encryption encodes sensitive data transmitted between services in order to safeguard it.
• Rate limiting restricts the number of requests made to backend services within a specified time frame.
• Advanced security includes other security measures that protect data.
• Secrets integration manages sensitive information using a vault system.

Overall, Gloo Gateway gets a 4/4 for these offerings, while Kong gets a 3/4. Read the full breakdown in the API Gateway buyers guide.

Flexibility and Customization

Every business uses their API gateways a little differently depending on their needs – flexibility and customization are key features of a valuable API gateway solution.

These are the API gateway flexibility and customization capabilities we compared:

• Ease of use describes how installation, configuration, and deployment operate.
• Out-of-the-box integrations include other applications that can be used to support the API gateway.
• Customization allows for additional functionality.
• Service mesh support incorporates service mesh integration with API gateways.

Overall, Gloo Gateway gets a 4/4 for these offerings, while Kong gets a 3/4. Read the full breakdown in the API Gateway buyers guide.

Compare Every API Gateway Capability

To learn more about how Gloo Gateway and Kong approach security and governance and flexibility and customization, download our API gateway buyer’s guide.

For a better understanding of API gateways, take our API Gateway Basics course.