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Kong vs. Apigee: Flexible Is the New Strong
Learn why flexibility and agility in an API gateway is key to have as your business needs continue to evolve.
Kong vs. Apigee: Performance Comparison and Migration Benefits
Stop investing in yesterday: Migrate to Kong on your own terms
Future-proof your infrastructure. Support Agentic, MCP, and multi-LLM workloads on any cloud, at any scale with Kong.
Why Migrate from Apigee to Kong Now?
Low Migration Risk
Bridge the gap between legacy API management and modern architecture with a phased Apigee to Kong migration strategy that keeps your services live while you move to Kong’s high-performance runtime.
High Return on Investment
Standardize on one platform across all clouds to cut repetitive effort and reduce deployment time. Kong’s lightweight gateway and API Platform deliver more for less.
Keep Up With What's Next
Govern not just API traffic but AI agents, MCP servers, multi-LLM workloads, and event streams from one platform, no rearchitecting when the next wave hits.
A Head-to-Head Comparison
For a detailed feature comparison, download the PDF.
Capabilities | Kong | Apigee |
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Kong vs. Apigee FAQs
What is the main difference between Kong and Apigee?
The primary difference is architecture and deployment flexibility. Kong is a lightweight, cloud-agnostic API gateway that runs natively on Kubernetes and supports any cloud environment. Apigee is a heavier, legacy platform primarily locked into the Google Cloud (GCP) ecosystem. In performance benchmarks, Kong demonstrates up to 31x higher throughput (54,250 TPS vs. 1,750 TPS) and lower latency than Apigee.
Is Apigee locked into Google Cloud?
Yes, Apigee X and Apigee Edge are heavily tied to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). While Apigee Hybrid allows for some data plane management on Kubernetes, the control plane and deep integrations force a dependency on GCP infrastructure. Kong, by contrast, is fully cloud-agnostic and can run on AWS, Azure, GCP, on-premise, or in hybrid environments without feature limitations.
How do I migrate from Apigee to Kong without downtime?
Migration from Apigee to Kong is best achieved using a phased "Strangler Fig" pattern. This involves placing Kong alongside your existing Apigee deployment and gradually shifting traffic endpoint-by-endpoint. Kong’s support for declarative configuration (via decK CLI) and automated import tools helps translate Apigee XML policies into Kong plugins, ensuring a low-risk transition that keeps services live throughout the process.
Which API gateway supports Kubernetes natively?
Kong is designed as a Kubernetes-native API gateway. It utilizes the Kong Ingress Controller to manage APIs directly via Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), allowing for GitOps-friendly workflows. Apigee offers a hybrid option but relies on a more complex, legacy architecture that is not natively integrated into Kubernetes workflows to the same extent as Kong.
Does Kong support AI and multi-LLM management?
Yes. Kong serves as an AI Gateway that governs AI agents, MCP servers, and multi-LLM workloads. It provides centralized capabilities for prompt engineering, semantic caching, and traffic control for Large Language Models, allowing you to manage AI traffic alongside traditional API requests in a single platform.