BBQ Firewall vs Kong Gateway WAF

BBQ Firewall

Model: Freemium (Free tier + paid licenses with lifetime option)

Kong Gateway WAF

Model: Tiered (Plus per-gateway + Enterprise custom)

BBQ Firewall

• 7G/8G Request Filtering

  Regex-based pattern matching against incoming URIs, query strings, user agents, and referrers. Based on over a decade of refinement by Jeff Starr.

• SQL Injection Protection

  Blocks common SQL injection patterns including UNION, SELECT, eval(), and base64-encoded payloads.

• Directory Traversal Protection

  Catches path traversal attempts, null byte injection, and requests for sensitive system files.

• Bad Bot Blocking

  Filters known malicious user agents and referrer spam patterns.

• Request Method Scanning

  Checks all HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) against firewall rules.

• Customizable Patterns

  Add, edit, or remove firewall patterns to fine-tune protection for your specific site (Pro feature).

• Block Statistics

  Visual bar graphs showing hit counts per pattern to measure firewall effectiveness (Pro feature).

• Email Alerts

  Receive notifications when requests are blocked (Pro feature).

Kong Gateway WAF

• Gateway-Embedded WAF

  WAF runs as a plugin inside the Kong Gateway process, inspecting API traffic at the same layer where routing, authentication, and rate limiting occur. No separate WAF appliance or additional proxy hop needed.

• OWASP Top 10 Protection

  Built-in protection against common web application attacks including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, command injection, and path traversal at the API gateway layer.

• Plugin Ecosystem

  Over 100 plugins for security, traffic control, authentication, and observability. WAF works alongside bot detection, IP restriction, CORS, ACL, and rate limiting plugins in a configurable execution chain.

• Third-Party WAF Integrations

  Open plugin architecture supports third-party WAF engines including open-appsec (ML-driven detection) and Wallarm (API security). Teams can choose the WAF engine that fits their threat model.

• Kubernetes-Native Deployment

  Kong Ingress Controller and Kong Kubernetes Operator provide native Kubernetes integration. WAF policies can be managed declaratively through Kubernetes CRDs alongside gateway configuration.

• Hybrid Mode

  Cloud-managed control plane with self-hosted data planes. WAF policies are centrally managed and distributed to data planes running in any environment, including air-gapped networks.

• AI Gateway

  Dedicated AI gateway capabilities including LLM proxy, token-based rate limiting, semantic caching, PII sanitization, prompt guardrails, and MCP server proxy. WAF protects AI endpoints alongside traditional APIs.

• Declarative Configuration

  Gateway and WAF configuration can be managed as code through declarative YAML/JSON, enabling GitOps workflows and CI/CD pipeline integration for security policy changes.

• Advanced Rate Limiting

  Enterprise-grade rate limiting with sliding window counters, consumer groups, and cluster-wide synchronization. Works in conjunction with WAF to prevent both application-layer attacks and abuse.