Who is Kong best for?

Best use cases for Kong

• Platform engineering teams that want a production-grade API gateway with maximum plugin flexibility and are willing to own the operational responsibility of running a self-hosted gateway.
• Kubernetes-native organizations where Kong Ingress Controller manages API routing, authentication, and rate limiting as part of their Kubernetes service mesh without a separate gateway deployment.
• Teams evaluating open-source gateway options who want a large community, extensive plugin ecosystem (300+ plugins), and multiple deployment options (DB mode, DB-less, Konnect managed) from one vendor.

Who should avoid Kong?

• You want fully managed enterprise governance outcomes without running a platform
• Your org is strongly cloud-native and prefers native IAM + managed control planes
• You can’t staff upgrades, incident response, and operational ownership for gateway layer

Upgrade triggers for Kong

• Gateway sprawl appears and you need standardized deployment templates and policy-as-code
• You need better auditability and governance visibility across teams
• You need stronger reliability/latency controls for high-throughput gateways

Next steps