Compare Hurl and Kong on pricing, features, platforms, and ratings — both API Tools tools, Open Source vs Freemium pricing to decide which fits your team.
At a Glance
Hurl
Kong
Primary category
API Tools
API Tools
Rating
Not documented
Not documented
Pricing model
Open Source
Freemium
Starting price
Free
Free (open source); paid plans custom-priced
Free plan
Not documented
Yes
Free trial
Not documented
Yes
Platforms
Mac, Windows
Not documented
Team collaboration
Not documented
Not documented
AI features
Not documented
Yes
Public API
Yes
Yes
Pricing Compared
Starting price reflects the lowest paid tier, not the full cost for every team size or usage level.
Hurl
Open Source — Free N/A
Kong
Kong Gateway (Open Source) — Free N/A
Konnect Free Trial — $0 for 30 days 30-day trial
Konnect Plus — Custom, billed per gateway monthly Monthly
Konnect Enterprise — Custom pricing Annual
Pros & Cons
Hurl
Pros
Completely free and open source with no paid tiers or limits
Lightweight single binary with no scripting language or GUI required
Powerful built-in assertions make it a genuine API testing tool, not just a request runner
Plain-text format is easy to version control, review, and diff
Backed and actively maintained by Orange with a stable release history since 2020
Cons
Smaller plugin and template ecosystem compared to Postman or Insomnia
No polished graphical interface, which can be a barrier for non-technical testers
Steeper learning curve for complex chained scenarios compared to point-and-click tools
Limited built-in mocking or virtualization capabilities
Less mainstream brand recognition than established API tools like Postman
Kong
Pros
Open-source Kong Gateway is free, production-ready and widely adopted
Unified platform for both traditional API traffic and AI/LLM traffic governance
Large plugin ecosystem covers most authentication, security and transformation needs
30-day free trial of Konnect gives full enterprise functionality before committing
Backed by significant funding and a mature enterprise support organization
Cons
Konnect's per-gateway pricing can become expensive as API programs scale
Plugin development and Lua-based customization require specialized expertise
Enterprise pricing is not publicly listed and requires a sales conversation
Feature set can be more complex to configure than lighter, purpose-built gateways
Some advanced governance features are gated behind the Enterprise tier only
Use Cases
Hurl
API Testing in CI/CD Pipelines — Run automated HTTP assertion tests on every commit or deployment as part of a build pipeline.
Quick HTTP Request Scripting — Script and chain HTTP requests in plain text for debugging or exploring an API without writing code.
Contract and Regression Testing — Maintain version-controlled test suites that validate REST and GraphQL API responses over time.
Kong
Enterprise API management — Platform teams use Kong Gateway and Konnect to manage authentication, rate limiting and analytics across hundreds of internal and external APIs.
AI traffic governance — Teams route LLM calls through Kong's AI Gateway to enforce token quotas, prompt governance and cost control.
Microservices connectivity — Organizations use Kong Mesh alongside Kong Gateway to manage service-to-service traffic in Kubernetes environments.