Kong is indeed a lot more than just a load balancer or proxy. We provide an ecosystem of functionality on top of high performance proxy core to allow you to better manage how your APIs, services, and applications interact with each other and with the world.

You could use us as an alternative to Istio, or you could integrate us with Istio. We provide additional control capabilities on top of what Istio does, and also service decentralized and centralized deployments. Basically, you could use Istio for a mesh (or use kong for the same mesh) and then use Kong to connect all your legacy apps and services into the same control platform. That way, you get global visibility and control at multiple layers - so you can get as granular as you want or as macro as you want.