Aspect	Kong Gateway (self-hosted)	Kong Konnect (cloud SaaS)
Deployment	You install and manage Kong yourself (VMs, Kubernetes, bare metal)	Kong hosts the control plane; you run minimal “Data Planes”
Upgrades	You upgrade Kong manually	Kong handles upgrades for control plane automatically
Scaling	You manage scaling (HA, clustering)	Kong auto-scales the Control Plane, you scale only Data Planes
Security	You manage certificates, patching, hardening	Kong handles security for the control plane, you secure data planes
Analytics	Optional, via your own Prometheus/Grafana, or Enterprise Edition Analytics	Built-in with Konnect — real-time metrics, usage, dashboards
Admin GUI	Kong Manager on your VM	Cloud UI in Konnect (always updated)
Developer Portal	Host and manage it yourself	Cloud-hosted Developer Portal included
RBAC / Single Sign-On (SSO)	Enterprise feature; you configure LDAP, OIDC yourself	Native SSO, multi-organization support
Pricing	License + cost of infrastructure + admin work	Subscription pricing (includes hosting + support)
Reliability	Depends on your HA setup	Konnect is a SaaS SLA (uptime guaranteed)

Why choose Kong Konnect over self-managed Kong Gateway?

• Faster to deploy: no need to install, configure, secure Control Plane.
• Zero maintenance: no patching, backups, upgrades for control plane.
• Global availability: Control Plane is multi-region by default.
• Modern features: You get new Kong features faster (Konnect users get earlier access).
• Built-in observability: native dashboards, logging, analytics ready.
• Multi-tenant support: You can separate teams, apps, etc easily.
• Reduced DevOps overhead: focus only on managing lightweight Data Planes.