Kong Gateway
Kong Gateway is an open-source API gateway and microservices management platform that acts as a reverse proxy, routing client requests to backend services. It provides features like authentication, rate limiting, logging, and security to manage, secure, and monitor API traffic in distributed systems. Built on top of NGINX and Lua, it is highly scalable and extensible through plugins.
Developers should use Kong Gateway when building microservices architectures or managing APIs at scale, as it centralizes cross-cutting concerns like security and monitoring, reducing code duplication. It is ideal for enterprises needing to handle high volumes of API requests with features such as load balancing and real-time analytics, often in cloud-native or hybrid environments.