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Tyk vs. Kong Comparison

Which is the best API Gateway provider for you?

November 17, 2022

Written by
Louis-Victor Jadavji, Cofounder of Taloflow

Who should you choose and why?

âś‹ Most important consideration

  • Kong and Tyk have comparable features, but Kong has much better performance and consumes less CPU.

🤔 Strongly consider Tyk over Kong if

  • You want better protection from cross-site scripting attacks.
  • You need to integrate with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and certificate software tools.
  • You’re integrating with external secure token services.

🤔 Strongly consider Kong over Tyk if

  • Improved traffic management, prioritization, caching, throttling, and rate limiting, are important to you.
  • You want best-in-class features for open API standards used when designing RESTful APIs.
  • You’re creating virtual copies of your APIs.

📝 Other Notes

  • Compared to Kong, Tyk provides better deployment flexibility if you have a large, complex, and distributed cloud infrastructure.
  • Tyk has a GraphQL developer portal (Kong doesn’t).
  • Kong has better auditing and reporting features compared to Tyk.

Tyk

Tyk stands as an open-source and lightweight API Gateway that employs GraphQL. It primarily focuses on API governance and cloud-native microservice development across teams. As an open-source solution, Tyk offers flexibility and customization options to organizations. Furthermore, its emphasis on API governance and microservice development makes it an ideal choice for organizations that are implementing or maintaining a microservices architecture. This targeted functionality allows teams to build and manage APIs that are well-suited to modern, cloud-native applications.

Kong Gateway

Kong’s API Gateway delivers high performance while providing a level of deployment flexibility that is much appreciated by software engineers. The service is built on NGINX Open Source and maintains a relatively small footprint. However, it is essential to note that this solution requires the use of Lua scripts and external databases to handle gateway configurations and API policies. Despite these requirements, Kong’s API Gateway's high performance and flexibility make it an attractive solution in the realm of API management.

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About the Author

Louis-Victor Jadavji (or "LV") is a recognized leader in the cloud services industry. He's helped 50+ digital native companies like ModusBox, Later, and NS1 choose the right cloud stack for their applications. His work has been featured in Forbes (30 Under 30 All-Star), HuffPost, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Inc. Magazine.

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