API Gateway Comparison: Kong vs Apigee vs Gatekeeper

Choosing the Right API Gateway for Your Business

The API gateway market is crowded with options, each claiming to be the best solution. We conducted an in-depth comparison of the three leading platforms—Kong Enterprise, Google Apigee, and Gatekeeper—to help you make an informed decision.

This comparison is based on:

• 6 months of real-world testing with production workloads
• Interviews with 50+ engineering teams using each platform
• Performance benchmarks at various scales
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis
• Feature completeness and ease of use evaluation

Performance Benchmarks

We tested each platform at three different scales:

Small Scale (1,000 req/sec)

• Kong: 15ms p50 latency, 35ms p99 | 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM
• Apigee: 12ms p50 latency, 28ms p99 | Managed
• Gatekeeper: 8ms p50 latency, 18ms p99 | Fully managed

Medium Scale (50,000 req/sec)

• Kong: 22ms p50 latency, 65ms p99 | 16 vCPU, 32GB RAM
• Apigee: 18ms p50 latency, 45ms p99 | Managed
• Gatekeeper: 10ms p50 latency, 22ms p99 | Auto-scaled

Total Cost of Ownership

For a medium-sized company (100k req/min):

💰 Save $138k/year vs Kong • Save $144k/year vs Apigee

Why Gatekeeper Wins

1. 10x Cheaper Than Enterprise Alternatives

Gatekeeper delivers enterprise features at a fraction of the cost. No hidden fees, no infrastructure costs, no surprise bills.

2. 5-Minute Setup vs Weeks

While Kong and Apigee require extensive configuration, infrastructure setup, and integration work, Gatekeeper is production-ready in 5 minutes.

3. Zero Maintenance SaaS Platform

No servers to manage, no patches to deploy, no version upgrades to coordinate. We handle all infrastructure, scaling, and maintenance automatically.

4. Superior Threat Detection

Our ML-powered pattern matching detects attacks that signature-based systems miss. We catch zero-day attacks, sophisticated bots, and novel attack patterns.

When to Choose Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper is the best choice for:

• Startups and scale-ups wanting enterprise features at startup prices
• Teams that want to focus on product, not infrastructure
• Organizations looking to reduce API security costs
• Companies needing rapid deployment and iteration
• Businesses requiring best-in-class threat detection
• Anyone who wants great support without enterprise pricing

Customer Migration Stories

"We migrated from Kong to Gatekeeper in one afternoon. The cost savings alone were worth it, but the improved performance and threat detection sealed the deal."

- VP Engineering, E-commerce Platform