API Gateway Apache APISIX and Kong Selection Comparison

Apache APISIX and Kong are both open-source microservice API gateways, so how do you compare and choose between them?

These two projects are covered by complete documentation and tests, and many production users are using them, so don’t worry about stability and their sustainable development. This article will focus on the most direct and verifiable functions and performance. To make a comparison from a different perspective.

These two projects are covered by complete documentation and tests, and many production users are using them, so don’t worry about stability and their sustainable development. This article will focus on the most direct and verifiable functions and performance. To make a comparison from a different perspective.

Features	Apache APISIX	KONG
Dynamic upstream	Yes	Yes
Dynamic router	Yes	Yes
Health check	Yes	Yes
Dynamic SSL	Yes	Yes
L4 and L7 proxy	Yes	Yes
Opentracing	Yes	Yes
Custom plugin	Yes	Yes
REST API	Yes	Yes
CLI	Yes	Yes

For a more detailed comparison.

Features	Apache APISIX	Kong
Belongs to	Apache Software Foundation	Kong Inc.
Tech Architecture	Nginx + etcd	Nginx + postgres
Communication channels	Mail list, Wechat group, QQ group, GitHub, meetup	GitHub, freenode, forum
Single-core CPU, QPS(enable limit-count and prometheus plugins)	18000	1700
Latency	0.2 ms	2 ms
Dubbo	Yes	No
Configuration rollback	Yes	No
Route with TTL	Yes	No
Plugin hot loading	Yes	No
Custom LB and route	Yes	No
REST API <--> gRPC transcoding	Yes	No
Tengine	Yes	No
MQTT	Yes	No
Configuration effective time	Event driven, < 1ms	polling, 5 seconds
Dashboard	Yes	No
IdP	Yes	No
Configuration Center HA	Yes	No
Speed limit for a specified time window	Yes	No
Support any Nginx variable as routing condition	Yes	No

Performance

After enabling the limit-count and prometheus plugins, the performance of Apache APISIX is ten times that of Kong.

Here are more detailed steps: https://gist.github.com/membphis/137db97a4bf64d3653aa42f3e016bd01, Interested developers can follow the picture to verify.

Why Is Apache APISIX Outperformed?

Here, we discuss the reasons behind the differences in functionality and performance:

1. The routing complexity of Apache APISIX is O(k), which is only related to the length of uri and has nothing to do with the number of routes; the routing time complexity of kong is O(n), which increases linearly with the number of routes.

2. The time complexity of IP matching of Apache APISIX is O(1), which will not cause CPU resources to run out with a large number of IP judgments.

3. The route matching of Apache APISIX accepts all the variables of Nginx as conditions and supports custom functions; other gateways have several built-in conditions.

4. Apache APISIX uses etcd as the configuration center. There is no single point. If a machine is down arbitrarily, the gateway cluster can still operate normally. Other gateways based on relational databases will have a single point of problem.

5. Apache APISIX configuration can reach all gateway nodes within 1 millisecond, using etcd watch; other gateways poll the database regularly, and it usually takes 5 seconds to get the latest configuration.

6. Apache APISIX plugins have been carefully tuned to maintain millisecond-level latency under high pressure.

7. Apache APISIX's unique plugin arrangement and low-code feature can greatly reduce the threshold of secondary development.

Further Read