Tools for managing Konnect and Kong Gateway

kongctl is a command-line interface for managing Konnect resources programmatically. It provides a comprehensive toolkit for defining infrastructure as code, integrating into CI/CD pipelines, and automating API lifecycle management.

decK

decK is a command line tool that facilitates API Lifecycle Automation (APIOps) by offering a comprehensive toolkit of commands designed to orchestrate and automate the entire process of API delivery.

Konnect APIs

Konnect APIs allow you to manage your ecosystem, including Kong Gateway configuration management, Analytics, Dev Portal, and more.

Kong Admin API

Kong Gateway comes with an internal RESTful API for administration purposes. This API comes in two options: open-source and Enterprise.

Kong Ingress Controller

Kong Ingress Controller allows you to run Kong Gateway as a Kubernetes Ingress to handle inbound requests for a Kubernetes cluster.

Terraform providers for Kong

Kong offers two Terraform providers: one for managing Kong Gateway in Konnect, and one for managing Kong Gateway on-prem.

How do I pick a management tool?

	Why should I use this?	Konnect	Self-managed
kongctl	You want to manage Konnect platform resources (APIs, Dev Portals, control planes) with declarative configuration and automation You need interactive command-line access to Konnect You’re building CI/CD pipelines for Konnect infrastructure	Supported	Not supported
decK	You want to manage entity configuration with declarative, file-based, GitOps-style API configuration and automation You don’t use Kubernetes or Terraform already	Supported	Supported
Konnect APIs	You want to manage resources on the Konnect platform and its apps (such as Dev Portal and Catalog) programmatically You need low-level, flexible, and direct integration or automation	Supported	Not supported
Kong Admin API	You’re running Kong Gateway on-prem with a database You need low-level, flexible, and direct integration or automation	Not supported	Supported
KIC	You’re running Kong Gateway in a Kubernetes environment You want Kubernetes-native API Gateway management	Supported	Supported
Terraform	You have existing review and approval processes built around Terraform Your internal users are already familiar with HCL / Terraform	Supported	Supported
kong CLI	You’re running Kong Gateway in DB-less mode and not on Kubernetes You need to interact with individual Gateway instances directly, such as for upgrades, or to restart or reload a specific instance You need to interact with data planes when running in hybrid mode	Supported	Supported

Tools for managing Konnect and Kong Gateway

Tools

kongctl