Alternatives to Kong

This page outlines alternatives to Kong for teams that need to validate and monitor API behavior. The listed tools vary in scope, deployment model, and depth of analysis. middleBrick is included as a self-service option that focuses on scanning and reporting rather than runtime governance.

A self-service API security scanner that submits a URL and receives a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. It performs black-box testing using only read-only methods and text-only POST probes, completing scans in under a minute without agents or code access. The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 2023, including authentication bypass, sensitive data exposure, SSRF indicators, and LLM-specific adversarial probes across multiple tiers.

OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 specifications are parsed with recursive $ref resolution, and findings are cross-referenced against the spec to identify undefined security schemes or deprecated operations. Authenticated scanning supports Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and cookies, gated by domain verification. The platform provides a web dashboard, CLI, GitHub Action, MCP server, and API client, with continuous monitoring and compliance mapping to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10.

Findings are deletable on demand, and scan data is never used for model training. The tool does not fix, patch, or block issues; it reports findings with remediation guidance.

These platforms provide runtime policy enforcement, traffic management, and developer portals alongside analytics. They operate as proxies or managed gateways and typically require integration into the deployment path.

• Apigee: A full lifecycle API platform with analytics, monetization, and security policies, suited for large-scale, managed environments.
• AWS API Gateway: A managed service for creating, deploying, and monitoring APIs with tight integration to AWS identity and logging services.
• Azure API Management: Provides API gateway capabilities with subscription, quota, and policy management in Azure environments.
• Google Cloud Endpoints: Combines service mesh ingress with API key and quota controls on GCP.

These tools emphasize local development, debugging, and extensibility through plugins or custom middleware.

• Envoy Proxy: A high-performance edge and sidecar proxy with extensive filter support for observability and fine-grained traffic control.
• Kong Gateway: An extensible API gateway built on Envoy, offering plugins for authentication, rate limiting, and request transformation via a declarative or database-driven model.
• Traefik: A dynamic reverse proxy and ingress controller that integrates with service discovery and supports middleware for routing and security.

Products in this category emphasize policy definition, audit logging, and evidence collection for assessments. They complement gateways by adding vulnerability scanning, configuration checks, or runtime protection.

• Checkow: A tool for checking Kubernetes and infrastructure configurations against security best practices.
• Wiz: A cloud security posture management platform that maps infrastructure risks and compliance alignments.
• Traceable: An API security platform focused on runtime application self-protection and threat detection.

Consider whether your primary need is runtime enforcement, developer experience, or security validation. Gateways like Kong excel at traffic management and policy enforcement at scale, while scanners like middleBrick focus on pre-deployment risk identification. Open source proxies such as Envoy and Traefik offer flexibility for teams that want to host and customize their infrastructure. Security and compliance tools are most effective when aligned to specific frameworks such as PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10, and when their findings are integrated into existing governance processes.

When evaluating options, review deployment models, required observability, supported protocols, and the operational overhead of maintaining custom policies. For security validation, complement gateway controls with periodic scanning and clarify how findings map to audit evidence requirements.