head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs fastapi_mcp
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi_mcp has 12,008 stars, 967 forks, 169 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 67% (20,001 vs 12,008 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; fastapi_mcp is written in Python under MIT. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, fastapi_mcp 8%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (openapi), 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
| grpc-gateway | fastapi_mcp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-11-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 967 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick grpc-gateway if
- You weight community size — 20K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fastapi_mcp if
- You want the fastapi_mcp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and fastapi_mcp fits your workflow better
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About fastapi_mcp
FastAPI MCP is an MIT licensed Python library from Tadata that exposes the endpoints of an existing FastAPI application as Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, so MCP clients such as Claude and Cursor can call a team's own API, and it is built for Python backend developers who already run FastAPI services and want agent access without hand writing a separate MCP server.
read the full fastapi_mcp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or fastapi_mcp more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars and fastapi_mcp has 12,008. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and fastapi_mcp free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and fastapi_mcp under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and fastapi_mcp?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and fastapi_mcp in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, grpc-gateway or fastapi_mcp?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,001 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose fastapi_mcp if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.