Kong Gateway

    Kong Gateway runs in front of any RESTful API and can be extended through modules and plugins. It’s designed to run on decentralized architectures, including hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud deployments.

    With Kong Gateway, users can:

    • Leverage workflow automation and modern GitOps practices
    • Decentralize applications/services and transition to microservices
    • Create a thriving API developer ecosystem
    • Proactively identify API-related anomalies and threats
    • Secure and govern APIs/services, and improve API visibility across the entire organization

    Extending the Kong Gateway

    Kong Gateway is a Lua application running in Nginx. Kong Gateway is distributed along with , which is a bundle of modules that extend the lua-nginx-module.

    This sets the foundations for a modular architecture, where plugins can be enabled and executed at runtime. At its core, Kong Gateway implements database abstraction, routing, and plugin management. Plugins can live in separate code bases and be injected anywhere into the request lifecycle, all with a few lines of code.

    Kong provides many for you to use in your Gateway deployments. You can also create your own custom plugins. For more information, see the plugin development guide, the , and the guide on creating plugins with other languages.

    Kong Gateway is available in the following modes:

    Kong Gateway (OSS): an open-source package containing the basic API gateway functionality and open-source plugins. You can manage the open-source Gateway with Kong’s or with declarative configuration.

    Kong Gateway (available in ): Kong’s API gateway with added functionality.

    • In Free mode , this package adds Kong Manager to the basic open-source functionality.
    • In Plus mode , you have access to more Kong Gateway features, but only through Konnect Cloud. See the and the Plus-labelled plugins on the Plugin Hub for more information.

    This package is also available as part of .

    Features

    provides a RESTful interface for administration and configuration of Services, Routes, Plugins, and Consumers. All of the tasks you can perform against the Gateway can be automated using the Kong Admin API.

    Kong Manager

    is the graphical user interface (GUI) for Kong Gateway. It uses the Kong Admin API under the hood to administer and control Kong Gateway.

    Here are some of the things you can do with Kong Manager:

    • Create new Routes and Services
    • Activate or deactivate plugins with a couple of clicks
    • Group your teams, services, plugins, consumer management, and everything else exactly how you want them
    • Monitor performance: visualize cluster-wide, workspace-level, or object-level health using intuitive, customizable dashboards

    Kong Dev Portal

    is used to onboard new developers and to generate API documentation, create custom pages, manage API versions, and secure developer access.

    Kong Vitals provides useful metrics about the health and performance of your Kong Gateway nodes, as well as metrics about the usage of your proxied APIs. You can visually monitor vital signs and pinpoint anomalies in real-time, and use visual API analytics to see exactly how your APIs and Gateway are performing and access key statistics. Kong Vitals is part of the Kong Manager UI.

    Kubernetes

    Kong Gateway plugins

    provide advanced functionality to better manage your API and microservices. With turnkey capabilities to meet the most challenging use cases, Kong Gateway plugins ensure maximum control and minimizes unnecessary overhead. Enable features like authentication, rate-limiting, and transformations by enabling Kong Gateway plugins through Kong Manager or the Admin API.

    Kong also provides API lifecycle management tools that you can use with Kong Gateway.

    Insomnia enables spec-first development for all REST and GraphQL services. With Insomnia, organizations can accelerate design and test workflows using automated testing, direct Git sync, and inspection of all response types. Teams of all sizes can use Insomnia to increase development velocity, reduce deployment risk, and increase collaboration.

    decK

    decK helps manage Kong Gateway’s configuration in a declarative fashion. This means that a developer can define the desired state of Kong Gateway or Konnect – services, routes, plugins, and more – and let decK handle implementation without needing to execute each step manually, as you would with the Kong Admin API.

    Get started with Kong Gateway

    Download and install Kong Gateway. To test it out, you can choose either the open-source package, or run Kong Gateway in free mode and also try out Kong Manager.

    After installation, get started with one of our introductory guides:

    • : An introduction to Kong Gateway, common objects, and basic Admin API commands.
    • Getting started guide: The complete Kong Gateway getting started guide provides in-depth examples, explanations, and step-by-step instructions, and explores Kong’s many available tools for managing the gateway.

    Try in Konnect

    Kong Konnect can manage Kong Gateway instances. With this setup, Kong hosts the control plane and you host your own data planes.

    There are a few ways to test out the Gateway’s Plus or Enterprise features:

    • Sign up for a .
    • If you are interested in evaluating Enterprise features locally, request a demo and a Kong representative will reach out with details to get you started.

    For the latest version support information for Kong Gateway and Kong Mesh, see our .