What are Kong plugins?

Is Kong API free?

You should check the kong terms and conditions, as there is a limit to the free accounts.

A limited number of users can create new user API access keys without charge, up to 50 in one month. This number varies with the region.

Can I use Kong without a domain? When you are developing your application, you need to use the official documentation to test. In the case of development on your own, you must use a local domain name, and use API keys to identify users. Is the API a free service? How much does it cost? We don't set the price for our service. The charges are added to the price in the corresponding country. You can get an estimate by using Google search kong pricing, or use a 3rd party API calculator that includes all available options.

Is Kong compatible with my application? There are two ways to integrate Kong into your application: API keys and OAuth 2.0 I have an API key, how do I integrate Kong? It is very simple. You just need to change the key into a value of your application.

How do I use OAuth 2.0 to integrate Kong? When configuring your own OAuth, it is easy to make an adjustment. To be more precise, when configuring your application OAuth, you can directly access an existing API key, and the token.

Kong doesn't require a certificate, but why do I need one? Kong supports TLS encryption for secure communications with the Kong backend. A digital certificate is required to perform this operation. The certificate is also required for Kong to perform authentication and authorization. Kong itself does not require a certificate.

How do I configure SSL for Kong? To enable SSL encryption for Kong, create a certificate using CAcert.org or create a self-signed certificate.

How can I make my app open-source?

Is Kong the best API gateway?

Let's find out!

In early 2025, two new API gateways came to market. Kong and F5 released theirs and now we can compare! Here are the features we'll look at: Simple architecture. Fully async, in-memory processing for high throughput. Full support for GraphQL. Support for multiple APIs through simple configuration. Integration with Kong Enterprise. Multiple backends, including AWS, Kubernetes, and Google Cloud. And one that's free with great support (Kong Labs). Kong vs F5 vs Kong Labs. Kong was announced in August, F5 announced theirs in September, and Kong Labs in December. We chose to put them up against each other to see how they stack up and how the API gateway landscape changes when you start to compete against a free offering.

Kong and F5 are both available as open source, enterprise versions, but the free version comes from Kong Labs. Kong Labs and Kong Enterprise are commercial versions of the product that both have Enterprise Features and SLAs.

How to choose? If you're new to API Gateways, Kong Labs would be your first option. If you're already running an Enterprise API Gateway, Kong and F5 should be your first options. You can also check out our API Gateway Comparison article for more details on what each product has to offer.

Let's dive into this comparison and see how these services stack up against each other! Table of Contents. Kong vs F5: Overview. In this section, we'll take a quick overview of how these products compare against each other.

What are Kong plugins?

How to Use Kong Plugins?

Why are they needed in API management?

A simple answer would be, a plugin is nothing but a piece of code written by you that performs some specific task. Kong plug in makes the application better by solving specific problems. With plugins you can customise different Kong behaviour which enhances its ability to work in the way it really should. You can use these plugins for enhancing and customising the way your api works.

What is Kong Plugin? A plugin in Kong is just a piece of code which allows you to add extensions to the behavior of the APIs. A plugin acts as an extension that gives you additional capabilities to your server.

Plugin architecture. A plugin is an extension to your API server. You may have already thought that what is the actual difference between plugins and services. The answer will help you understand that.

Plugins are meant to extend the functionality or the core feature of your API server. There could be several plugins in the same API and they act collectively. Plugins are not independent modules which cannot communicate with each other. They communicate with others with the help of services.

Services are like services that you can find in other apps. It is meant to provide communication with external resources, database or anything which comes out in between. Services also have the ability to communicate with other modules (the plugins) so that they can act together. They act as intermediary modules between them.

If the plugin and service have to work with each other, the first thing that should be done is to create one interface (eg:IPlugin). If the interface is not created, plugins will not be able to work independently.

To understand this better check out the following image. Working Of Plugins. The following plugins are used while working of a basic RESTful endpoint. CORS, basic authentication & cache plugin - The plugins are mainly responsible for enabling cors and basic auth (basic authentication or HTTP header authorization). You can access different methods defined in the plugin by giving specific method keys like GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, etc.

These basic plugins are not enough when you need to implement many additional plugins so you need to get more specific and complicated plugins. Custom Auth Plugin - Auth plugins work with basic plugins and can be used for doing more specific things.