How does Kong compare to AWS API Gateway for enterprise API management?

Kong is cloud-agnostic and runs anywhere (on-premises, any cloud, Kubernetes) with the same feature set. AWS API Gateway is fully managed, scales to millions of requests/second, integrates with Lambda, Cognito, and WAF, but is limited to AWS. Kong Enterprise adds API analytics, developer portal, and rate limiting advanced features that AWS API Gateway lacks natively.

What rate limiting strategies should enterprises implement at the API gateway?

Rate limiting strategies include: per-consumer rate limits (tokens per minute for each API key), IP-based rate limiting for unauthenticated endpoints, tiered limits by subscription plan (free/pro/enterprise), sliding window algorithms to prevent burst abuse, circuit breakers to protect backends from overload, and quota management for monthly API consumption tracking.

How do API gateways implement OAuth 2.0 and JWT authentication?

API gateways verify JWTs locally using cached public keys (JWKS endpoint), enabling stateless authentication without calling the IdP for every request. OAuth 2.0 token introspection is used for opaque tokens requiring real-time validation. Gateways enforce scopes (ensuring the token has permission for the requested resource) and can enrich requests with user context claims before forwarding to backends.

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Best Solutions for API Gateway

Expert analysis of the best API gateway solutions, comparing Kong, AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management, Google Apigee, and Nginx-based API gateways.

Frequently Asked Questions

Kong Gateway (open-source and Enterprise) is the most widely adopted API gateway for microservices, supporting 70+ plugins for auth, rate limiting, logging, and transformations with a plugin-extensible architecture. AWS API Gateway is the managed choice for AWS-native deployments. Envoy-based gateways (Ambassador, Emissary) are popular for Kubernetes-native API routing.

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