Kong Gateway WAF vs Tempesta FW

Kong Gateway WAF

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

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Tempesta FW

Model: Free (open source) + professional services

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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.

Tempesta FW

• Kernel-Level Performance

  Built directly into Linux TCP/IP stack, processing up to 1.8M HTTP requests per second - 3x faster than Nginx or HAProxy.

• Multi-Layer DDoS Protection

  Integrated protection against volumetric and application-layer DDoS attacks with rate limiting, JavaScript challenges, and adaptive QoS.

• HTTP Tables

  Extends Linux iptables/nftables for application-layer filtering, enabling rules that combine IP addresses with HTTP headers and content.

• Intelligent Load Balancing

  Machine learning-powered load balancing with persistent sessions, weighted round-robin, and rendezvous hashing strategies.

• Web Acceleration

  Built-in caching using Tempesta DB, an ultra-fast in-memory database with NUMA-aware distribution and SIMD optimizations.

• High-Performance TLS

  Tempesta TLS is 40-80% faster than Nginx/OpenSSL with 4x lower latency for TLS handshakes.

• Bot Protection (WebShield)

  Open-source automated bot protection via WebShield — detects and blocks DDoS bots, scrapers, shopping bots, and booking bots using TLS and HTTP fingerprint analysis on access logs stored in ClickHouse.

• Volumetric DDoS Protection

  Upcoming open-source volumetric DDoS protection solution, completing a full L3-L7 DDoS and bot mitigation stack when combined with Tempesta FW's application-layer defences and WebShield.

• Native XDP Integration

  Uses Linux XDP (eXpress Data Path) for early packet dropping, enabling efficient mitigation of volumetric attacks.