Kong gateways the APIs you built. MeterCall gateways the 1.2 million APIs everyone else built. Bring your own credentials. $0.001 per call. Live in 5 minutes.
Kong and MeterCall look similar on the surface — both are API gateways. The difference is whose APIs sit behind them.
An API gateway for your own internal services. You write the APIs, you deploy Kong in front of them, Kong handles rate limits, auth, observability. Great if you're Netflix with 200 microservices.
An API gateway for everyone else's APIs. Stripe, Salesforce, Twilio, Bloomberg, Epic, 2M more. You bring your credentials, we route the call, you pay per call. No microservices required.
Honest comparison. Kong is a great product — just for a different problem.
| Kong | MeterCall | |
|---|---|---|
| What sits behind it | Your own microservices | 2M external APIs (Stripe, Salesforce, etc.) |
| Connectors / adapters | You write them. Plugins extend Kong itself. | 21,000,000 catalog entries, 130 production-wired adapters |
| Pricing (published) | Kong OSS free; Konnect ~$250/mo Plus tier; Enterprise: call sales | $0.001 / call base, $0.01 / call premium |
| Setup time | Install Kong, configure services, write plugins, deploy | 5 minutes. Paste credential, make call. |
| Who holds the credentials | You (for your services) | You. Your Stripe key never leaves your account. |
| Built-in auth to 3rd party APIs | N/A — you wire it | Yes — Bearer / OAuth / HMAC pre-wired |
| Per-call metering & billing | Observability yes; billing no | Stripe-metered. One invoice across every API. |
| Best fit | Platform teams running their own microservices at scale | Builders wiring AI + SaaS + data APIs into a product |
| What we are NOT | We are not a service mesh. Not a replacement for Kong if you're running internal microservices. Use both. | |
Keep using Kong for your services. Drop MeterCall in front of the external APIs you call from those services. The two sit together, not in competition.
Beta is open. $0.001 per call. Bring your own credentials.
Join the Beta