head to head · open source
kong vs argo-cd
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. argo-cd has 24,178 stars, 7,852 forks, 4,362 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 83% (44,147 vs 24,178 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; argo-cd is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, argo-cd 32%. argo-cd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| kong | argo-cd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 7.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kong if
- You weight community size — 44K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick argo-cd if
- You want the argo-cd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and argo-cd fits your workflow better
About kong
Kong (also known as Kong Gateway) is an open source, cloud native, platform agnostic API, LLM, and MCP gateway, licensed under Apache 2.0, built for platform, DevOps, and AI engineering teams that need a single high performance layer to route, secure, and observe both conventional API traffic and agentic LLM traffic.
About argo-cd
Argo CD is a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. It lives in the cloud native ecosystem and is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. The project describes itself as a tool for declarative continuous delivery and continuous deployment, and its application definitions, configurations, and environments are expected to be declarative and version controlled. It sits in the Infrastructure and Operations category, specifically cloud infrastructure management, and it has been developed in the open for roughly nine years, with a large community footprint measured in tens of thousands of stars…
read the full argo-cd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or argo-cd more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and argo-cd has 24,178. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and argo-cd free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and argo-cd under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and argo-cd?
kong is written in Lua and argo-cd in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, kong or argo-cd?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose argo-cd if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.