Apigee vs. Kong

Apigee was originally designed to expose legacy monoliths as APIs for third-party consumption. Its architecture prioritizes API management breadth over raw throughput, resulting in lower QPS compared to modern gateways built for microservices traffic.

Kong, built on NGINX and OpenResty, delivers significantly higher throughput than Apigee. However, its reliance on PostgreSQL or Cassandra for configuration persistence and Lua-based plugin execution introduces overhead at scale.

Apache APISIX, also built on NGINX and LuaJIT, eliminates the database bottleneck with an etcd-based configuration store. In head-to-head benchmarks between APISIX 3.0 and Kong 3.0, APISIX achieves 140% of Kong's throughput without plugins and 200% with plugins enabled.

With a single-core QPS of 23,000 and an average latency of just 0.2 milliseconds, APISIX is the fastest open-source API gateway available in 2026.

Apigee's scalability is constrained by its Google Cloud dependency. Apigee X auto-scales within GCP, but hybrid deployments (Apigee Hybrid) still require a Google Cloud control plane. Organizations running multi-cloud or on-prem workloads face significant architectural limitations.

Kong scales horizontally by adding gateway instances, but each instance needs access to a shared PostgreSQL or Cassandra database. At high instance counts, this shared-state architecture creates coordination complexity and potential bottlenecks.

Apache APISIX uses a stateless data-plane architecture with etcd as its configuration store. Each APISIX node operates independently, syncing configuration via etcd watch — enabling true horizontal scaling without shared-state bottlenecks.

APISIX processes tens of billions of API calls per day for its largest customers. Combined with 100+ built-in plugins and multi-language extension support (Java, Go, Python, Wasm), organizations can scale both traffic and functionality without architectural compromises.

Apigee provides built-in policies for traffic management, security, and mediation, but lacks a traditional plugin marketplace. Custom extensions require JavaScript or Java development within Apigee's proprietary framework, limiting portability.

Kong boasts 300+ plugins, but the most valuable enterprise features — plugin ordering, deep WebSocket support, OpenID Connect, FIPS 140-2 compliance, and advanced rate limiting — are locked behind paid Enterprise licenses. The open-source Kong Gateway has a more limited feature set.

Apache APISIX ships 100+ plugins that are fully open-source under Apache 2.0, with zero enterprise paywall. Features that Kong charges for — including <link1>dynamic routing</link1>, <link2>hot reload</link2>, <link3>canary releases</link3>, <link4>advanced rate limiting</link4>, and <link5>observability integrations</link5> — are available out of the box in APISIX.

APISIX also supports the broadest custom plugin development options: Lua, Java, Go, Python, and WebAssembly. This means teams can extend the gateway in their preferred language without learning Lua.

Apigee is a proprietary Google Cloud product. Migrating away requires re-implementing API policies, proxies, and developer portal integrations from scratch. Organizations with large Apigee deployments face months of migration effort and significant re-engineering costs.

Kong Gateway's open-source core uses the Apache 2.0 license, but Kong Inc. maintains sole control over the project roadmap. Key enterprise features are proprietary, and the company has previously changed licensing terms — creating uncertainty for long-term investment.

Apache APISIX eliminates vendor lock-in entirely. As a project governed by the Apache Software Foundation (not a single company), APISIX's development is driven by a diverse contributor community. The Apache 2.0 license guarantees perpetual access to the full source code.

With APISIX, organizations retain full control over their API infrastructure. The code can be freely used, modified, and distributed — and no single vendor can change the terms.

Apigee's ecosystem is primarily confined to the Google Cloud platform. While it integrates well with GCP services (Cloud Logging, Cloud Armor, IAM), organizations using AWS, Azure, or on-prem infrastructure find limited ecosystem support.

Kong has built a large ecosystem over many years, with integrations across multiple platforms. However, the open-source community's influence on the project direction has diminished as Kong Inc. increasingly focuses on its commercial offerings.

Apache APISIX has become the most active open-source API gateway project on GitHub. It has surpassed Kong in contributor count and maintains one of the highest commit frequencies among CNCF projects. The APISIX ecosystem includes an Ingress Controller for Kubernetes, a standalone dashboard, and integrations with every major observability and service mesh platform.

This community-driven development model ensures APISIX evolves based on real-world user needs rather than a single company's commercial priorities.

Both Apigee and Kong have established enterprise customer bases. Apigee is often chosen by organizations already invested in Google Cloud, while Kong is popular among teams seeking a self-hosted open-source starting point.

However, Apigee's tiered support model means organizations on lower pricing plans receive limited assistance. Kong's enterprise support requires a paid license, putting a price tag on production-grade help.

Apache APISIX has been adopted by global enterprises including Amber Group, Airwallex, Zoom, vivo, and iQIYI. Many of these organizations migrated from Kong or Apigee, citing APISIX's superior performance, fully open-source model, and responsive community support as key factors.

The migration trend from both Kong and Apigee to APISIX reflects a broader industry shift toward API gateways that combine high performance with genuine open-source governance.