Start with Kong (portable gateway you can standardize)
If your team wants maximum flexibility, open-source economics, and Kubernetes-native deployment, Kong is the most mature open-source API gateway with the broadest plugin ecosystem. Kong OSS is free to run — you pay only for infrastructure. The operational cost is real: you need to own configuration management, plugin updates, and gateway availability. Kong Enterprise adds RBAC, secrets management, and dedicated support, but the OSS tier handles many production use cases without licensing fees.
- Recommendation: Kong
Recommended starting points
Based on your constraints, these products typically fit best. Read each decision brief to confirm pricing behavior and limits match your reality.
Kong
Developer-first, portable API gateway platform used to standardize routing, auth, and policy across environments when you can own the gateway ops model.
Why this recommendation
If your team wants maximum flexibility, open-source economics, and Kubernetes-native deployment, Kong is the most mature open-source API gateway with the broadest plugin ecosystem. Kong OSS is free to run — you pay only for infrastructure. The operational cost is real: you need to own configuration management, plugin updates, and gateway availability. Kong Enterprise adds RBAC, secrets management, and dedicated support, but the OSS tier handles many production use cases without licensing fees.