Companies that use Kong

Source: Analysis of Linkedin bios of 601 companies that use Kong

I noticed Kong's users span an incredibly diverse range of industries, but what unites them is they're all operating critical infrastructure that connects people to services. These aren't simple SaaS tools. They're running insurance operations, processing financial transactions, managing pharmaceutical distribution, operating government services, and powering retail networks. Many are in highly regulated sectors like banking, healthcare, and insurance where system reliability and security aren't optional. Others are logistics companies moving physical goods, media organizations distributing content, or utilities managing essential services.

Looking at company maturity, these are overwhelmingly established enterprises. I see government agencies, universities founded decades ago, retail chains with thousands of locations, and financial institutions managing billions in assets. Employee counts trend heavily toward the hundreds or thousands. Even the smaller companies often describe "25+ years of experience" or being "industry pioneers." The few venture-backed companies in the list are typically well past Series A, and many are subsidiaries of larger conglomerates.

Source: Analysis of tech stacks from 601 companies that use Kong

I noticed that Kong users are heavily cloud-native companies running sophisticated microservices architectures at scale. The overwhelming presence of AWS (122x more likely) and Google Cloud (119.7x more likely), combined with specialized Kubernetes tools, tells me these are engineering-driven organizations that have moved beyond simple cloud adoption into complex, distributed systems territory. They're not dabbling in API management as a nice-to-have. They need it because their infrastructure demands it.

The pairing of Kong with Kubernetes External DNS is particularly revealing. External DNS automates DNS record management for Kubernetes services, which only matters if you're running many services that need external access. This suggests these companies are managing dozens or hundreds of APIs across multiple services. Add in Dynatrace (448.7x more likely), and I see organizations that understand their complexity requires serious observability. You can't manage what you can't measure, and these teams know it. The Atlassian Cloud correlation makes sense too. Companies coordinating this level of technical complexity need robust collaboration tools for their engineering teams.

The full stack reveals these are product-led technology companies, likely Series B and beyond, that have reached a scale where API governance becomes critical. They're past the startup phase where everything can be handled manually. Their growth has created architectural complexity that requires purpose-built infrastructure. The presence of sophisticated monitoring and cloud infrastructure tools suggests they have mature engineering organizations with platform or DevOps teams.