head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs higress
grpc-gateway has 20,012 GitHub stars, 2,415 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. higress has 9,695 stars, 1,379 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 106% (20,012 vs 9,695 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress 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 higress fits your workflow better
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway gRPC to JSON proxy generator following the gRPC HTTP spec About The gRPC Gateway is a plugin of the Google protocol buffers compiler protoc. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server which translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. This server is generated according to the google.api.http annotations in your service definitions. This helps you provide your APIs in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. Docs You can read our docs at: Testimonials We use the gRPC Gateway to serve millions of API requests per day, and have been since 2018 and through all of that…
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About higress
AI Gateway AI Native API Gateway Official Site Docs Blog Roadmap MCP Server QuickStart Developer Guide Wasm Plugin Hub English 中文 日本語 What is Higress? Higress is a cloud native API gateway based on Istio and Envoy, which can be extended with Wasm plugins written in Go/Rust/JS. It provides dozens of ready to use general purpose plugins and an out of the box console (try the demo here). Core Use Cases Higress's AI gateway capabilities support all mainstream model providers both domestic and international. It also supports hosting MCP (Model Context Protocol) Servers through its plugin mechanism, enabling AI Agents…
read the full higress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or higress more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,012 GitHub stars and higress has 9,695. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and higress free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and higress?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and higress 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, grpc-gateway or higress?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,012 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.