---
layout: docs
page_title: Why choose Consul?
description: >-
  Consul is a service networking platform that centralizes service discovery, enables zero trust networking with service mesh, automates network infrastructure, and controls access to mesh services with the Consul API Gateway. Compare Consul with other software that provide similar capabilities with one or more of the core use cases.
---

# Why choose Consul?

HashiCorp Consul is a service networking platform that encompasses multiple capabilities to secure and simplify network service management. These capabilities include service discovery, service mesh, DNS, configuration management, and API gateway functionality.

While competing products offer a few of these core capabilities, Consul combines them in a single product that runs across runtimes and cloud providers. The following table lists each Consul feature, other products that compete with that feature, and a link to a page with additional information:

| Consul use case              | Competing products                                                      | More information                                                                                     |
| :--------------------------- | :---------------------------------------------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Service discovery            | Eureka<br />Zookeeper<br />Kubernetes                                   | [Consul compared with other service discovery software](/consul/docs/use-case/service-discovery)     |
| Service mesh                 | Istio<br />Solo Gloo Mesh<br />Linkerd<br />Kong/Kuma<br />AWS App Mesh | [Consul compared with other service mesh software](/consul/docs/use-case/service-mesh)               |
| DNS service                  | NS1<br />AWS Route53<br />AzureDNS<br />Cloudflare DNS                  | [Consul compared with other DNS tools](/consul/docs/use-case/dns)                                    |
| Configuration management     | Chef<br />Puppet                                                        | [Consul compared with other configuration management tools](/consul/docs/use-case/config-management) |
| API gateway for applications | Kong Gateway<br />Apigee<br />Mulesoft<br />Gravitee                    | [Consul compared with other API Gateways](/consul/docs/use-case/api-gateway)                         |